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AUTHOR: 


HEATLEY,  DAVID 

PLAYFAIR 


TITLE: 


STUDIES  IN  BRITISH 
HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

PLACE: 

LONDON 

DA  TE : 


1913 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 

BIBLIOGRAPHIC  MICROFORM  TARGET 


Master  Negative  # 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


942 
H367 


Restrictions  on  Use: 


Heatley,  David  Playf  air. 

Studies  in  British  history  and  politics,  by  D.  P.  Heat- 
ley  ...    London,  Smith,  Elder  and  co.,  1913. 

XV,  219  p.    20J*". 

Contents. — Bacon,  Milton,  Laud :  three  points  of  view. — An  American- 
independence  group. — Some  marks  of  English  history. — Politics  as  a  prac- 
tical study. — Frederic  William  Maitland. 


1.  Gt.  Brit — Hist. — Addresses,  essays,  lectures.  2.  Gt  Brit. — Pol.  & 
govt.  —  A<idresse&,-e66ays,  lectures.-  3.  U.  S.  —  Hist.  —  Revolution  —  Biog. 
4.  Maitland,  Frederic  William,  1850-19067 


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STUDIES  IN 
BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 


i 


I, 


II 


STUDIES  m 

BRITISH   HISTOEY 

AND   POLITICS 


BY 


D.    P.    HEATLEY 

LECTURER   IN   HISTORY 
IN  THE   UNIYBRSITT   OF   BDINBURaH 


LONDON 
SMITH,    ELDER    AND    CO. 

15   WATERLOO   PLACE 
1913 

[AU  rights  rtMrvtd] 


TO 


MY  MOTHER 


PREFACE 


In  the  first  study  in  this  volume  an  attempt  is 
made  to  expound,  compare  and  estimate  the 
reasoning  of  three  well-known  men  on  the  problem 
of  Church  and  State.  Their  views,  and  especially 
the  several  points  of  view,  have  significance  from 
the  seventeenth  century  to  the  twentieth  in  the 
interaction  of  rehgion  and  pohtics  in  Britain. 

'  An  American-Independence  Group  '  is,  in  part, 
a  by-product  of  an  interest  which  I  have  taken  in 
the  study  of  the  American  Question  for  many 
years,  but  it  is  also  a  consideration  of  fundamentals 
in  the  pohtics  and  statesmanship  of  Independence. 
Distinction  is  drawn  between  attachment  to  a 
constitutional  principle  and  the  claims  of  a  poHtical 
and  national  ideal  for  one  people.  The  constitution- 
aUty  that  was  threatened  prevailed :  the  larger 
loyalty  that  demanded  recognition  was  sacrificed  : 
'  in  Congress,  July  4,  1776,'  the  less  triumphed  at 
the  expense  of  the  greater. 

In  this  American  study,  as  well  as  in  two  of  the 
three  which  follow  it,  the  politics  are,  I  trust, 
pohtics  drawn  from  history,  and  yet  with  due 
homage  rendered  to  'the  thinkers.'    In  our  own 


vu 


viii      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

day  has  come  the  rise  of  a  new  Britain,  with  a  call 
for  a  new  political  expression  ;  and  the  hard  pro- 
blem has  to  be  faced  of  effecting  a  harmony  be- 
tween the  politics  and  the  economics  of  this  Britain, 
or,  at  the  least,  of  obviating  disaster  from  conflict 
between  them.  It  may  seem  to-day,  as  it  seemed 
to  Tocqueville,  that  a  new  science  of  poUtics  is 
required  for  a  world  of  new  conditions.  Possibly 
that  may  be.  But,  even  should  a  '  new  '  political 
science  be  thought  to  be  necessary,  in  spite  of  a 
wealth  of  wisdom  and  a  flexibiHty  of  adaptation  in 
the  old,  not  without  loss  and  dishonour  and  peril 
will  the  Britain  of  to-day  and  of  to-morrow  disregard 
the  achievements  of  her  past  and  especially  the 
instruments,  means  and  manner  of  her  achieving  in 

politics. 

The  study  on  Frederic  William  Maitland  appeared 
in  April  1907  in  the  Juridical  Review  ;  I  am  in- 
debted to  the  proprietors  for  permission  to  make  it 
part  of  this  book.  The  Notes  appended  to  the 
study,  which  are  meant  to  explain  the  many 
allusions  to  Maitland's  work  and  to  that  of  others, 
have  been  written  for  the  volume  now  published. 
There  are  portions,  technical  and  substantial,  of 
Maitland's  subjects  on  which  I  have  no  title  to  say 
a  word,  and  my  own  independent  research  and 
study  have  been  more  in  modem  than  in  medieval 
history  ;  but  for  many  years  I  have  been  in  debt 
to  him,  and  the  way  in  which  the  tribute  of  a 


PREFACE 


IX 


stranger  was  accepted  by  one  or  two  whose  privilege 
it  was  to  know  him  personally  and  who  are  qualified 
to  appreciate  his  contribution  to  historical  learn- 
ing and  literature,  has  encouraged  me  to  repubhsh 
what  I  ventured  and  was  impelled  to  write  about 
him  shortly  after  he  died. 

The  Appendix  of  Notes— some  of  them  supple- 
mentary discussions — is  considerable  in  proportion 
to  the  text.  But  their  bulk  might  easily  have  been 
increased  :  I  have,  for  example,  withheld  references 
to  the  many  passages  in  Bacon's  writings  on  which 
the  summary  exposition  of  his  politics  (on  pages 
13-14),  as  distinguishable  from  his  views  on  the 
problem  of  Church  and  State,  is  directly  founded. 
Some  of  the  Notes  and  discussions — such  as  those 
on  the  '  ghttering  generahties  '  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  on  a  standard  for  interpretation 
of  the  Great  Charter,  and  on  '  King  '  and  '  Crown  ' 
in  British  history— will,  I  hope,  have  value  even 
apart  from  their  relation  to  the  text. 

D.  P.  H. 


Edinburgh,  March  1913. 


y> 


CONTENTS 

BACON,  MILTON,  LAUD  :    THREE  POINTS  OF  VIEW      . 
The  ideal  of  the  medieval  Church,  and  its  failure.     The 
basis  of  the  Church  in  England— its  dual  position- 
before  the  Reformation.     After  the  Reformation  the 
Church  of  the  State  not  a  fully  accepted  Church  of  the 
nation.     The  problem  for  the  State.     A  retrospect. 
The  composite  character  of  Bacon.     A  summary  ex- 
position of  his  poUtics.     Bacon  a  Politique.     Bacon's 
views  on  the  Church  question.     His  preference  for  vera 
ilia  et  media  axiomata.     His  via  media  for  Church  and 
State.     Its  peril.     Bacon  and  Milton.     Milton's  poli- 
tics.    Rehgion  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  State.     Milton 
and  Laud.     The  crisis  for  the  institutions  of  State  and 
Church  :   the  necessity  of  making  a  stand.     Constitu- 
tion in  State  and  in  Church.     The  measure  of  Laud's 
j  us  ti6  cation. 

AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE  GROUP    . 

An  academic  imperiaUst.  John  Fothergill's  reasoning 
on  the  American  Question.  '  The  American  cause  ' ; 
the  lesser  and  the  greater  constitutionalism  :  the  ideal 
for  (a)  *  Americans '  and  (6)  Britons.  Considerations 
against  the  '  inevitableness  '  of  the  separation:  (1) 
'  Independence  ' ;  Parliament  and  Crown— a  problem 
of  readjustment ;  (2)  there  was  time  for  statesman- 
ship to  intervene ;  (3)  a  question  of  movement  of 
mind;  (4)  the  struggle  to  secure  a  majority.     Colonial 


PA  OK 
1 


XI 


30 


Xii      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND  POLITICS 

students  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Arthur  Lee 
of  Virginia.  Lee,  Boswell  and  Johnson.  FrankUn 
and  Lee.  The  Declaration  of  Independence  and  its 
signers.  Benjamin  Rush  and  his  Edinburgh-trained 
coUeagues  at  the  College  of  Philadelphia.  James 
WUson.  His  reasoning  in  favour  of  constitutionaUsm 
and  union  under  the  Crown.  John  Witherspoon  ;  the 
College  of  New  Jersey.  An  American-Scot.  Satirised 
by  Odell.  The  politician-ecclesiastic.  Influence  of 
Witherspoon. 

SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 

History  as  a  study  of  '  events  '  and  of  mind-in-action. 
Britain's  success  in  '  poUcy  '  and  her  sUght  deference 
to  systems  of  political  thought ;    England  poUticaUy 
viewed.     The  primary  dispositions  underlying  English 
poUtics  ;    the  tradition  of  '  liberty  ' ;    its  association 
with   authority,   especially   at  the   crises  of  English 
history.     The  appeal  to  precedent.     Not  usually  in  the 
interest  of  exclusiveness  or  a  narrow  conservatism. 
Two  schools  of  thought  in  EngUsh  poUtics  and  among 
EngUsh  historians.     lUustrations  of  the  sympathetic, 
idealistic  or  sentimental  school.    Its  inadequacy.    The 
prevailing  temper  and  the  average  mind.     Illustrations 
of  practical  instinct  and  of  the  interaction  of  Uberty 
and  authority,    (a)  Statesmen:  WilUam  i.— Edward  i. 
—Henry   vn.— the    Stewarts    and    Francis    Bacon- 
Cromwell— the  second  Pitt— Peel.     (5)  Crises:  (1)  the 
Puritan  ideal  and  its  partial  failure— the  nation  and 
State  power— the  Restoration  ;    (2)  the  Revolution  ; 
(3)  Britain  and  the  French  Revolution,     (c)  Particular 
and  incidental  illustrations  :  the  rise  of  central  repre- 
sentative institutions— the  extension  of    the   parUa- 
mentary  oath  to  Jews— the  '  rule  of  law.'     (d)  The 
testimony  of  poUtical  thought.     Problems  of  to-day. 


PAOK 


62 


CONTENTS 

POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 

The  study  of  politics  and  the  practice  of  politics: 
Spinoza.     Dependence  of  political  thinkers  on  poUtical 
facts  and  conditions— Aristotle— Aquinas  and  Dante— 
MachiaveUi— Hobbes    and    a    contemporary    critic- 
Locke   and   subsequent   writers.     Ways   of   studying 
politics  :   I.  The  study  of  problems  of  our  own  day- 
its  importance— the  warning,  '  Too  much  politics  *— 
the  nation's  equipment  for  the  nation's  politics—'  the 
people  '   to-day— Ulustrations   of   problems.     II.  The 
study  of  past  poUtics— the  study  of  action  and  of 
thought— estimates  in  history— consistency  in  states- 
manship—the  expedient   and   the   opportunist— his- 
torical-mindedness— anticipations  of  present-day  pro- 
blems :      (a)  ecclesiastico-poUtical ;      (6)  flscal ;       (c) 
colonial.     III.  The  study  of  political  thinkers— tests 
in  the  study— examples  of  their  appUcation.     Lessons 
of  the  past  in  the  study  of  poUtics. 


XUl 

PAOB 

108 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND       .  •  .  • 

♦  Origines  Literarioe.'      Maitland's  introduction  to  the 
study  of  the  constitutional  history  of  England.     Con- 
dition, circa  1884,  of  the  study  of  the  constitution  and 
the    laws    of    England.     The    growth    of    Maitland's 
interest  in  the  study  of  the  history  of  EngUsh  law. 
The  Selden  Society.     Importance  of  the  laws  and  the 
Year-Books  for  the  understanding  of  medieval  Eng- 
land.    The  History  of  English  Law.     Other  contribu- 
tions to  the  knowledge  of  English  laws  and  institutions. 
Some   positions   and  advances  as  a  result  of  recent 
investigations.     Maitland's  style.     His  conception  of 
history. 


138 


■^^■'t%>f»-'xs»mi0fm 


t 


\ 


Xiv      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


CHIEF  NOTES 

Maitland  on  the  Reformation  and  the  canon  law.  Fuller 
on  Hooker  and  Travers  at  the  Temple.  Bancroft  on 
the  Puritans.  Bacon  and  Hobbes  on  '  good  laws.' 
Althusius  on  the  State,  sovereignty  and  Bodin.  Spinoza 
on  freedom  of  thought  and  speech.  Milton's  central 
argument  on  the  problem  of  Church  and  State 

Pownall  (1764;  1774)  on  the  American  Question.  Otis 
(1764)  on  the  American  Question.  Robertson  (Prin- 
cipal William,  historian)  on  the  American  Question. 
American  Honorary  Graduates  of  the  University  of 
Edinburgh,  1762-1786.  Contemporary  criticism  of 
the  '  glittering  generahties '  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.     Franklin  on  the  American  Question    . 


Clarendon's  criticism  of  Hobbes's  Leviatfian. 
Smith's  Commonwealth  of  England    , 


Sir  Thomas 


Spinoza  on  experience  as  a  guide  in  politics.  Bodin  on 
sovereignty.  The  influence  of  the  Civil  War  on 
Hobbes.  Locke  and  the  poHtics  of  the  Revolution. 
The  Catching  of  Leviathan  (1658).  Peel  on  the  colonies 
and  imperial  trade.  Montesquieu  and  Tocqueville  on 
civic  disposition.  Rousseau's  Le  Oouvemement  de 
Pologne.     Montesquieu  on  la  separation  dee  pouvoira     . 

S.  R.  Maitland.  F.  W.  Maitland's  historical  method 
{Domesday  Book).  Maitland  on  Bracton  and  on 
Maine's  '  stupendous  exaggeration.'  Maitland  on  the 
early  Year-Books.     Maitland  on  the  canon  law.     The 

•  right  of  appeal '  to  the  king  in  Anglo-Saxon  times. 

*  Folkland.'     Estimates    of    numbers    in    the    Middle 
Age.     Feoffamentum  antiquum  et  novum.     Interpreta- 


PAOK 


167 


CONTENTS 

tion  of  Magna  Carta.  *  King  *  and  *  Oown  *  in 
English  history.  The  feudal  *  system.*  Gierke  on 
the  universaUty  of  the  medieval  Church  and  the  unity 
of  mankind.  Maitland  on  law  and  imperial  unity. 
Marsilius  on  the  legislative  authority.  Bodin  on 
administrative  power  in  relation  to  sovereignty 


XV 

PAOK 


INDEX 


192 


216 


171 


186 


188 


BACON,  MILTON,  LAUD  :  THREE  POINTS 

OF  VIEW 

*  For  I  see  &  perceave,  that  the  master  Builders  of  our  Church 
in  repairing  of  it  again  were  so  wholy  bent  unto  the  doctrine, 
that  they  never  thought  of  Discipline :  and  so  reteined  it  stil 
almost  wholy  such  as  it  was  amongest  the  Papistes.  whereupon 
it  commeth  that  all  the  government  of  our  Church  is  not  taken 
out  of  God  his  worde,  but  out  of  the  Canon  lawe  and  decrees  of 
Popes,  which,  wither  it  were  done  by  reason  of  the  ignoraunce 
of  those  dales,  or  of  negligence,  or  for  ambition  and  vaine  glorie, 
or  because  they  thought  that  popish  Discipline  might  be  tollerated 
for  a  time,  or  for  what  purpose  soever :  surely  no  man  can  doubt, 
but  that  it  was  to  the  great  hinderance  and  discommoditie  of 
the  Church,  which  knoweth  it  throughUe,  and  which  diUgentlie 
considereth,  how  small  fruite  hath  growen  of  so  long  travaile 
and  labour  in  the  preaching  of  the  gospell.' — A  Ful  and  Plaine 
Declaration  of  Ecclesiastical  Discipline  out  of  the  Word  of  God, 
and  of  the  declining  of  the  Church  of  England  from  the  same 
(1680),  pp.  15-16.  [Ecclesiasticae  Disciplinae,  ei  Anglicanoe 
Ecclesice  ah  ilia  Aberrationis,  Plena  I  verbo  Dei,  &  dilucida 
explicatio  (1674),  p.  12.] 

*  Is  their  question  either  concerning  the  regiment  of  the  Church 
in  general,  or  about  conformity  between  one  church  and  another, 
or  of  ceremonies,  oflSces,  powers,  jurisdictions  in  our  own  church  ? 

A 


2         STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

Of  aU  these  things  they  judge  by  that  rule  which  they  frame  to 
themselves  with  some  show  of  probability,  and  what  seemeth  in 
that  sort  convenient,  the  same  they  think  themselves  bound  to 
practise;  the  same  they  labour  mightUy  to  uphold  ;  whatsoever 
any  law  of  man  to  the  contrary  hath  determined  they  weigh  it 
not.  Thus  by  following  the  law  of  private  reason,  where  the  law 
of  pubUc  should  take  place,  they  breed  discontent. '-Hooker, 
Ecclesiastical  Polity,  book  i.  c  16. 

*  Touching  our  conformity  with  the  Church  of  Rome,  as  also 
of  the  difference  between  some  Reformed  Churches  and  ours  .  .  . 
To  say,  that  in  nothing  they  may  be  followed  which  are  of  the 
Church  of  Rome,  were  violent  and  extreme.     Some  things  they 
do,  in  that  they  are  men,  in  that  they  are  wise  men,  and  Christian 
men  some  things,  some  things  in  that  they  are  men  misled  and 
bUnded  with  error.    As  far  as  they  follow  Reason  and  Truth, 
we  fear  not  to  tread  the  self -same  steps  wherein  they  have  gone, 
and  to  be  their  followers.    Where  Rome  keepeth  that  which  is 
ancienter  and  better,  others  whom  we  much  more  affect  leaving 
it  for  newer  and  changing  it  for  worse,  we  had  rather  f oUow  the 
perfections  of  those  whom  we  Uke  not,  than  in  defects  resemble 
them  whom  we  love.'— Op.  ciL,  book  v.  c.  28. 

« The  body  and  substance  of  reUgion  (as  is  said)  is  enjoined  and 
determined  in  Scripture,  which  must  not  be  altered.  Whatso- 
ever  is  not  determined  there  (and  the  circumstances  formaUties 
and  ceremonies  which  are  to  be  used  in  the  exercise  of  reUgion 
and  the  more  decent  worship  of  God  are  not  prescribed  and 
directed  by  the  Scriptures)  must  therefore  be  provided  for  and 
enjoined  by  that  authority  which  is  entrusted  with  the  govern- 
ment  of  that  dominion  and  people  where  the  same  is  to  be 
exercised ;  and  in  which  the  nature  and  humour  of  the  people, 
the  custom  and  disposition  of  the  time,  have  been  always  and  may 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  I   THREE   POINTS   OF  VIEW       3 

always  lawfully  be  considered  and  indulged  to.  .  .  .  Things  that 
were  of  themselves  indifferent  cease  to  be  indifferent,  and  become 
necessary,  when  they  are  by  lawful  authority  commanded  to  be 
practised  ;  and  kings  are  as  well  obliged  to  exact  obedience  to  the 
latter,  as  to  take  care  that  there  be  no  invasion  of  the  former.' 
— Clabendon,  Religion  and  Policy  (edn.  1811),  i.  pp.  3,  5. 


In  the  Middle  Age  it  was  a  fundamental  conception, 
and  for  a  time  the  ideal,  that  there  is  a  unity  of 
mankind  in  Christian  communities — the  concord  of 
the  Christian  commonwealth. ^    The  medieval  Church 
endeavoured  to  make  the  secular  power  subservient 
to  herself  in  furthering  this  ideal.     The  Church  was 
the  divinely  appointed  instrument  for  safeguarding 
and  advancing  the  higher  life  of  men  :  other  agencies 
can  be  but  contributory  ;  they  might  be  powers  for 
good,  and  even  claim  to  be  also  commissioned  by 
God,  but,  in  relation  to  this  impelling  motive  and 
supreme  object,  they  should  be  loyal  subordinates 
of  the  Church.     Only  in  the  Church  was  found  the 
real  community  of  men.     St.  Augustine,  Hildebrand, 
Aquinas  mark  epochs  in  historical  conflict,  but  do 
not  stand  for  essential  changes  in  development  of 
the  ideal,  or  in  deviations  from  it.     This  ideal  im- 
pressed the  minds  of  men,  and  moved  them  to 
action,   even  when  it  was  utterly   impracticable. 
Although  impracticable,  it  was  for  many  and  for 
long  an  incentive.     It  provided  the  Middle  Age  with 
its  chief  element  of  grandeur.     It  gave  to  the  Middle 


4         STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

Age  an  ethical  note  more  distinct  than  is  present  in 

the  Modem. 

The  explanation  of  why  and  how  that  ideal  failed — 
the  consideration  of  how  far  the  Church  gained  and 
what  it  lost  through  its  seemingly  expedient  and 
even  indispensable  organisation  of  interests  and  of 
powers,   many  of   which   were  not   in  themselves 
spiritual ;  how  far  it  acquired  and  with  what  dangers 
it  apphed  the  attributes  of  the  '  earthly  state  * — 
this  rivaby  of  Sacerdotium  and  Imperium  makes  up 
a  large  portion  of  medieval  history,  and  gives  to 
that  history  sequence  and  vitahty.     The  course  of 
the  struggle  pressed  upon  thinkers  and  upon  the 
men  of  affairs,  ecclesiastical  and  temporal,  the  deter- 
mination of  boundaries  in  jurisdiction,  of  the  relation 
of  parts  in  the  disposition  and  government  of  a 
community,  the  question  of  sovereignty  and  not 
merely  of  superiority.    From  this  struggle  of  the 
Middle  Age  there  came  a  large  and  fruitful  legacy 
in  political  thought  to  the  Modem.     But  the  ideal 
round  which  this  political  thought  had  been  nurtured 
was  crushed  before  the  close  of  the  Middle  Age — 
before   the   failure   of   constitutional   attempts   at 
reform  within  the  Church  led  to  the  onset  of  the 
Reformation. 

The  basis  of  the  Church  in  England  before  the 
Reformation  was  comprehensive,  in  the  sense  that 
the  Church  was  the  full  community  of  Christian 
men  :  protests  of  reformers  did  not  issue  in  effective 


i 


BACON,    MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE   POINTS   OF  VIEW       5 

secession  and  in  separate,  self-supporting  organisa- 
tion.   While  thus  comprehensive,  the  basis  was  not, 
in  the  later  sense,  a  State  basis.    In  some  respects 
the  Church  had  been  independent  of  the  State  (or 
the  secular  authority)  and  superior  to  it :    on  the 
most  severe  State  view,  it  was  semi-independent  of 
the  State.     In  other  words,  the  Church  was  the 
Church  CathoHc  in  England,  and  it  was  also  the 
Church  of  EnglsLnd—Anglicana  Ecclesia.    It  held  a 
dual  position,  and  much  of  the  intensity  and  histori- 
cal significance  of  the  stmggles  between  temporal 
power  and  spmtual  power  in  England  since  the 
Norman  Conquest  and  the  Hildebrandine  movement 
had  resulted  from   this   dual  capacity — this  dual 
relationship — of   the   Church.     The  new   basis,   in 
comparison,  at  least,  with  the  old  one,  was  a  State 
basis ;  2    in  some  ways  that  was  a  gain.     On  the 
other  hand,  the  basis  and  the  Church  as  thus  recog- 
nised could  not  be  comprehensive,  as  of  old ;   and 
that  was  in  itself  a  great  loss  and  the  source  of 
great  dangers — dangers,  as  the  event  proved,  greater 
even  to  the  State  and  to  the  prestige  and  security 
of  the  kingship  than  to  the  Church  and  the  religious 
life  of  the  community.     Owing  to  the  continued 
vitality  of  the  rejected  dogma  and  worship  within 
England  and  the  weight  of  Rome's  influence  from 
without,  and,  at  the  other  extreme,  owing  to  the 
principle  or  profession  of  individual  judgment  and 
the  methods  of  inquiry  and  innovation  on  which 


6        STtJDIES  m   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

the  reformers  rested,  making,  therefore,  for  fresh 
advance  or  change,  the  new  basis  of  '  the  Church  '— 
the  basis  of  any  organised,  defined  Church— could 
not  acquire  national  comprehensiveness. 

In  short,  the  Church  of  the  State  could  not  be  a 
fully  accepted  Church  of  the  nation.    It  is  by  refer- 
ence to  this  fundamental  that  we  must  think  of 
Hooker  and  Lord  Burleigh,  of  Laud  and  Charles  i. 
and  Strafford,  of  Milton  and  Cromwell.     It  is  only 
when  we  keep  this  formula  before  us  that  we  can 
appreciate  the  trials  of  Churchmen  and  of  statesmen, 
as  well  as  the  designs  and  aspirations  of  the  critics 
of  both,  in  the  second  half  of  the  sixteenth  century 
and  during  almost  the  whole  of  the  seventeenth  ; 
and,  as  it  was  inherent  in  the  Reformation,  the 
formula   is   still  vaUd   and   significant  to-day   for 
Anghcan  and  for  Nonconformist,  for  Church  and 
for  State.     The  Church  could  not  comprehend  all 
the  members  of  the  Church  of  Christ :    the  State 
could  not  comprehend — it  could  not  control — the 
nation.     The  old  ideal— that  all  should  be  in  unitate 
concordiae — had  gone  in  respect  of  those  things  that 
pertain  to  the  Church  ;   and  the  State  was  face  to 
face  with  the  very  serious  problem,  how  far  was  it 
justified  in  initiating  and  carrying  through  measures 
of  coercion  and  severity  for  securing  the  conformity 
of  its  own  *  subjects  '  with  that  one  Church  which 
the  State— those  in  authority  in  the  State— recog- 
nised and  protected  ;  and,  if  justified,  in  whatsoever 


BACON,  MILTON,  LAUD  :  THREE  POINTS  OF  VIEW   7 

degree,  how  far  was  it  to  the  interest  of  the  State — 


the  Crown  and  the  effective  organisation  of  govern- 
ment— how  far  was  it  poHtically  expedient,  to  en- 
danger the  loyalty  of  subjects  in  order  to  attain  a 
uniformity,  or  a  semblance  of  uniformity,  among 
worshippers.  *  Mihi  tamen  placet  disputatio  Bodini, 
ut  vi  non  sit  utendum  contra  subditos  qui  aUam 
amplexentur  religionem.  Sed  semper  sub  hac  ex- 
ceptione  sic  dico,  "Nisi  quid  detriment!  illinc  res- 
publica  capiat."  '  ^  Principles  of  toleration,  before 
*  the  age  of  toleration '  had  come,  had  to  be  appHed 
within  the  economy  of  State-right  and  State-power. 
The  Reformation,  through  the  poHtical  thought 
and  the  poUtical  practice  which  resulted  from  it, 
helped  to  develop  the  conception  of  sovereignty, 
and  to  harden  it  as  the  central  principle  for  the 
State.  Not  always  in  opposition  to  this  principle 
— at  times  without  deference  to  it — ^but  always  with 
recognition  of  the  principle  as  embodied  in  the  in- 
struments of  rule,  the  claims  of  believers  had  to 
be  translated  into  the  secured  rights  of  conscience  ; 
this  security  of  rights  to  individuals  had  to  be 
achieved  without  disintegrating  the  State.  How  to 
define  and  yet  be  as  Uttle  exclusive  and  coercive 
as  possible  ;  how  far  to  admit  Uberty  of  opinion 
and  rights  of  conscience  ;  how  duly  to  constitute  a 
Church  as  *  the  Church  of  England  '  and  of  EngHsh- 
men,  were  problems  vitally  affecting  the  constitution 
and  rights  and  powers  of  the  State.    The  State  of 


8         STUDIES  m   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

the  Tudors,  as  the  State  of  the  Commonweal,  had 
been  framed  as  the  gathering-in  of  the  civic  disposi- 
tions and  the  material  resources  of  EngUshmen  under 
the  sovereign,  and  it  rested,  for  its  strength,  on  the 
conformity  of  subjects:  was  it  possible  for  the 
Church— for  any  defined  Church  after  the  Reforma- 
tion—to be,  and  to  continue  to  be,  the  gathermg-in 
of  the  religious  dispositions  and  spiritual  resources 
of  EngHshmen  under  the  sovereign,  and  to  rest  on 
the  conformity  of  beUevers  ? 

Three  points  of  view  on  this  problem  are  pre- 
sented in  the  attitude  of  Bacon,  of  Milton,  and  of 
Laud. 

In  the  Cecil  Manuscripts  there  is  a  paper  of  the 
year  1564  which  sets  forth  in  conspectus  '  varieties 
in  the  services  of  the  Church  of  the  Precisians,'  ^  in 
respect  of  Service  and  Prayer,  the  position  of  the 
Table,  the  administration  of  the  Communion,  and 
Baptism.  For  example,  as  to  the  administration  of 
the  Communion,  we  are  told  that  some  officiate 
*  with  surpUce  and  copes,  some  with  surplice  alone, 
others  with  none  :  some  with  chaUce,  some  with  a 
communion  cup,  others  with  a  common  cup  :  some 
with  unleavened  bread,  some  with  leavened.  Some 
receive  kneeling,  others  standing,  others  sitting.' 
Such  were  the  rudiments  of  the  controversy— still 
within  'the  Church '—known  as  the  vestiarian 
controversy.    If    we    combine    this    statement    of 


k' 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  I   THREE  POINTS   OF  VIEW      9 

varieties  in  service  with  the  Puritan  demands  in 
Convocation  in  1563,  not  only  have  we  the  immediate 
cause  of  Archbishop  Parker's  Advertisements  and 
Articles  of  1566,  but  we  see  that  many  of  the  troubles 
of  Laud  were  troubles  also  to  Parker. 

This  diversity  within  a  Church  which  ought  to 
have  been  at  one,  it  was  thought,  both  for  her  own 
sake  and  for  the  sake  of  strength  against  Rome, 
brought  disquietude  to  a  poUtical  mind  like  Cecil's, 
and  to  leaders  of  the  Church  of  different  dispositions 
like  Grindal,  Whitgift  and  Bancroft. 

But  this  initial  phase  of  the  controversy,  dis- 
tinctively concerning  externals  and  symbols,  was 
soon  merged  in  the  real  and  vital  struggle  of  Church 
government ;  inevitably  it  was  thus  merged,  were 
it  merely  with  a  view  to  commanding  the  means  of 
victory  in  the  initial  points  of  contention.  This 
vital  struggle  had  been  entered  upon,  with  full 
consciousness  of  its  significance,  just  about  the  time 
of  the  birth  of  William  Laud  in  1573.  In  1572,  in 
the  *  Admonition  to  the  ParUament,'  which  had  its 
ablest  advocate  in  Thomas  Cartwright — the  *  T.  C 
of  the  controversy  with  Hooker — it  is  pertinently 
and  forcibly  asserted  that  the  contentions  are  '  not 
for  a  cap,  a  tippet,  or  a  surpHce,  but  for  great  matters 
concerning  a  true  ministry  and  regiment  of  the 
Church,  according  to  the  Word,  which  things  once 
estabHshed  the  others  melt  away  of  themselves.'  ^  In 
this  same  year  there  was  organised  at  Wandsworth 


10        STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

the  first  EngUsh  presbytery.    Two  years  later  was 
published  the  work  on  Ecclesiastical  Discipline  by 
Walter  Travers— -a  book  of  vast  and  unsurpassed 
influence  on  the  Church  dispute  till  the  close  of  the 
Puritan  era  :    by  reason  of  his  stately  diction  and 
his  sanity  and  restraint  Hooker  is  now  revered  by 
many  to  whom  Travers  is  wholly  unknown,  but  in 
relation  to  the  essentials  of  this  controversy  each 
was  worthy  of  the  other,  and  each  was  worthy  of 
being  an  incentive  to  his  hearers,  when,  at  services 
on  the  same  day  at  the  Temple,  one  of  them  gave 
*  pure  Canterbury,'  and  the  other,  sturdy  *  Geneva/  ^ 
If,  said  Hooker,  you  ask  of  such  men  why  they  con- 
form not  themselves  unto  the  order  of  the  Church, 
they  will  answer, '  We  find  no  such  thmg  commanded 
in  the  Word  '  ;  and  it  was  clear  that  the  '  discipline  ' 
which  they  would  set  up— a  discipUne  within  a  dis- 
cipline, as  Fuller  said  later— would  be  an  effective 
presbytery  within  a  titular  and  nominal  episcopacy, 
which  in  time  would  be  dispensed  with  altogether. 
In    addition,    there    were    Separatists,    Brownists, 
Barrowists,    advocates    of    'Reformation    without 
tarrying,'  upholders  of  the  sufficiency  of  a  faithful 
and  holy  company  gathered  in  the  name  of  Christ, 
in  need  of  no  civil  magistrate  for  the  things  of  the 
spirit,  of  no  State  protection  and  ties— the  fore- 
runners of  an  influential  body  of  men  in  the  history 
of  England  and  of  the  American  colonies,  in  the 
interaction  of  rehgion  and  poHtics.    These  discus- 


Pi 


BACON,  MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE  POINTS  OF  VIEW    11 

sions  caused  as  much  concern  to  the  State  as  to  the 
leaders  of  the  Church,  for  the  Puritan  disposition 
was  a  growing  one  in  England,  and  its  growth  was 
reflected  in  Parliament.     In  1593  an  Act,  due  to 
the  executive,  was  passed  against  *  seditious  sec- 
taries.'    In  the  same  year  was  published  Archbishop 
Bancroft's  book— a  useful  work  of  retrospect  and  on 
policy — Dangerous  Positions  and   Proceedings  .  .  . 
under  Pretence  of  Reformation  and  for  the  Presbyterial 
Discipline?    In  this  year,  also,  Hooker's  great  work 
on  Ecclesiastical  Polity  (the  first  four  books)  was 
entered  at  Stationers'  Hall.     Laud,  at  the  age  of 
twenty,  then  became  a  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College, 
Oxford  ;  and  Bacon,  at  the  age  of  thirty-two,  denied 
the  support  of  the  Cecils,  was  disappointed  in  his 
hope  of  becoming  Attorney-General.    The  contro- 
versies,   whose   origins    and   essentials   have   been 
briefly    indicated,    were   further   developed   before 
Milton  was  bom  in  1608  ;  and  the  course  of  develop- 
ment had  imperilled  both  Church  and  State  before 
Milton  in  1641  issued  his  pamphlet,  Of  Reforrmtion 
touching  Church  Discipline  in  England, 
What  have  we  ? 

A  Church  problem,  but  also  a  State  problem  :  a 
Church  problem,  but  also  a  problem  for  members  of 
Churches  or  of  communities  or  mere  aggregates  of 
worshippers  :  a  State  problem,  but  also  a  problem 
for  subjects  of  the  State— for  men  who,  although  sub- 
jects, were  members  of  a  commonwealth,  enjoying 


12       STUDIES   IK  BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

rights  of  citizenship,  exercising  powers  and  ready  to 
add  power  to  power  for  the  protection  of  their  own 
interests  and  opinions,  and  even  for  the  invasion  of 
the  interests  and  opinions  of  others  :  this,  at  a  tune 
when  the  prevaihng  temper  in  matters  of  rehgion 
was  for  uniformity— not  for  liberal-mindedness,  for 
discipline — ^not  for  toleration. 

We  have  to  disclose  three  points  of  view,  taken 
by  three  men  of  different  upbringing,  different 
associations,  mtellect  and  character,  on  a  problem 
on  which,  from  conditions  and  facts,  there  could 
not,  at  least,  be  only  one  view  ;  and  we  shall  find 
that  the  particular  view  of  each  of  the  three  was  a 
view  appropriate  to  him  and  pertment  to  his  general 
outlook  and  to  his  standards  in  life.  It  is  this  par- 
ticular view  within  a  general  view  in  the  case  of 
each  that  especially  demands  consideration. 

The  mind  of  Francis  Bacon  presents  a  difficulty : 
his  mind,  Hke  his  life,  is  abnost  uniquely  com- 
posite. Bacon  the  thinker  is  checked  by  Bacon 
the  poHtician,  the  politician  by  the  lawyer  and 
judge,  and  the  pohtician  and  professional  lawyer 
are  shaped  by  the  courtier,  by  the  man  of  the 
world,  by  the  man  who  has  to  stoop  to  petty  devices, 
degrading  his  greatness  by  thoughts  and  acts  of 
meanness,  in  order  to  assert  and  maintain  a  position 
to  which  his  consummate  powers  would  of  them- 
selves have  entitled  him,  without  ignoble  sacrifice  of 
right,  amid  conditions  less  sordid  and  less  adverse. 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  I   THREE   POINTS   OF  VIEW    13 

Like  Machiavelli,  Bacon  took  a  hard  estimate  of 
human  nature  :  he  finds  in  man  more  of  the  fool 
than  of  the  wise  :  he  insists  on  knowing  what  men 
really  do— not  merely  what  they  ought  to  do :  we 
owe  thanks  to  Machiavelli  for  that  lesson.®  He  is 
an  apologist  for  State  necessity,  for  *  reason  of 
State '  :  the  State,  for  its  own  security  and  for 
essential  national  well-being,  may  have  to  apply 
and  sternly  impose  measures  that  are  not  consistent 
with  liberties  of  the  people  or  of  a  section  of  them 
as  liberties  are  at  the  time  popularly  or  by  a  section 
conceived— measures  even  that  may  seem  to  be 
inconsistent  with  ethical  principles.  Bacon  would 
have  deemed  it  the  highest  commendation  if  it  were 
allowed  to  him— as  it  may  be— that  he  tried  to  view 
men  and  things  as  they  are :   he  tried  to  face  the 

facts. 

Prerogative  should  protect,  not  frustrate,  the 
rights  of  subjects  :  it  is  not  in  opposition  to  the 
common  law  :  the  common  law  should  by  it  be 
supplemented  and  perfected.  Let  the  kingship  be 
national,  for  such  is  its  function  and  its  justifica- 
tion. Headship,  unity,  responsibihty  there  must 
be  in  the  State.  But  there  are  diversities  and 
conflicts:  let  the  kingship  mediate.  Let  Parlia- 
ment be  permitted  freely  to  exercise  its  expressive 
function  :  let  it  voice  the  wants  of  the  nation.  Let 
the  king  and  his  mmisters  give  ear- give  heed— to 
this  voice  :    let  rule  be  rule  with  full  knowledge. 


14       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

Let  US  revise  our  laws  from  time  to  time  in  view 
of  a  change  of  conditions  :  let  us  hav©  a  care  of  our 
administration.  Perfervid  zeal  in  law-making — a 
superabundance  of  laws — let  us  not  countenance  : 
the  more  laws  we  make,  do  we  not  lay  the  more 
snares  to  entrap  ourselves  ?  ^  Still,  let  rule  be 
broad-based  on  an  understanding  of  needs  and  of 
whims,  of  what  is  straight  and  of  what  is  crooked. 
Taxes  and  steady  and  substantial  revenue  are  in- 
dispensable for  the  maintenance  of  the  State  and 
for  the  sinews  of  war ;  and  England  has  of  late 
grown  marvellously  in  riches.  It  may  be  that  the 
pride  of  the  Spaniard  is  too  overweening,  for  the 
tops  of  his  Empire  are  too  heavy  for  its  roots.  Yet 
England  cannot  live  to  herself  alone  :  she  cannot 
stand  in  isolation  ;  and  command  of  the  sea  may 
give  to  her  the  mastery  of  Empire  and  the  control 
of  vast  wealth.  For  herself,  therefore,  and  for  her 
place  among  the  nations  a  hberal  revenue  must  be 
assured  to  Crown  and  State  :  yet,  let  not  the  king 
by  haggling  with  his  commons  in  ParUament  seem 
as  merchant  rather  than  king  toward  his  people  : 
let  the  king  be  worthy  of  the  kingship  of  England. 
The  politics  of  Bacon,  like  his  nature,  were  com- 
posite, and,  where  conditions  and  facts  were  chang- 
ing and  producing  a  tyranny  of  circumstance,  his 
politics  could  not,  in  things  both  great  and  small, 
wear  for  long  the  aspect  of  consistency.  But  in 
essentials  it  was  a  wise  policy,  and  in  essentials  it 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE   POINTS   OF   VIEW     15 

was  fearlessly  uttered  by  him  to  James :  it  was  a 
wiser  policy  than  James  was  able  to  apply  or  to 
apprehend. 

It  would  be  going  too  far  to  say  of  Bacon,  as  was 
said  of  the  Politiques  by  Tavannes,  that  he  preferred 
the  peace  of  the  kingdom  or  of  his  own  home  to  the 
salvation  of  his  soul — that  he  would  rather  that  the 
kingdom  remained  at  peace  without  God  than  at 
war  for  Him.  Still,  Bacon  was  a  Politique  rather 
than  AngUcan  or  Puritan.  Religion,  with  its  organ- 
ised Church  and  ecclesiastical  interests,  may  not 
be  merely  an  instrumentum  regni,  but  the  Church 
must  not  endanger  the  State  :  reHgion  must  not 
conflict  with  State  policy  so  far  as  to  undermine 
State  security.  But  Bacon — the  Politique — ^is  a 
keen  observer  of  conditions,  with  some  tolerance  of 
differences  of  thought  and  opinion  and  of  their 
embodiment  in  practice.  What  does  he  profess  and 
assert  and  hope  for  ? 

The  Church,  like  the  State,  has  need  of  heads  and 
rulers.  The  Church,  even  more  than  the  State, 
should  seek  unity  ;  and  there  is  a  unity  that  is  not 
based  essentially  on  uniformity.  The  heads  and 
rulers  of  the  Church,  like  those  in  authority  in  the 
State,  must  not  ignore  thoughts  and  opinions  that 
tend  to  differences.  Bacon,  in  his  general  politics, 
is  more  with  Bodin  than  with  Bodin's  ablest  critic, 
Althusius  :  he  is  more  an  upholder  of  sovereignty  in 
a  State  as  unitary  than  an  advocate  of  that  efficacy 


16       STUDIES   IN   BRITISH   HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

and  benefit  of  complementary  rights  and  capacities 
of    the    several    associations,    which,    with    their 
corresponding   checks   on   the   exercise   of   power, 
together  constitute  the  State  as  in  itself  federal.^** 
Yet  he  makes  concessions  to  the  claim  of  a  Church 
to  an  identity  and  self -developing  life  of  its  own  : 
to  a  Church  as  the  gathering-up  of  the  spiritual 
activities  and  hopes  of  the  vast  majority  of  a  people 
he  would  grant  a  large  measure  of  right  of  self- 
development,  unimpeded  by  the  State  or  by  the 
secular  power.     In  a  paper  presented  to  James  in 
1603,    '  at  his  first  coming  in,' — ^that   one  of   his 
writings  in  which  he  probably  best  discloses  his 
convictions  and  preferences  so  far  as  they  were 
strongly  held  on  a  shifting  and  disturbing  question- 
Bacon  draws  a  parallel  between  Church  government 
and  civil  government.    God  has  *  left  the  like  liberty 
to  the  Church  government,  as  he  hath  done  to  the 
civil  government,  to  be  varied  according  to  time 
and    place  and  accidents,  which  nevertheless  his 
high  and  divine  providence  doth  order  and  dispose. 
For  all  civil  governments  are  restrained  from  God 
unto  the  general  grounds  of  justice  and  manners, 
but  the  poHcies  and  forms  of  them  are  left  free. 
So   that   monarchies  and   kingdoms,   senates   and 
seignories,  popular  states  or  communalities,  are  all 
lawful,  and  where  they  are  planted  ought  to  be  main- 
tained inviolate.    So  likewise  in  Church  matters,  the 
substance  of  doctrine  is  immutable,  and  so  are  the 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE   POINTS   OP  VIEW    17 

general   rules   of  government,   but   for  rites   and 
ceremonies,    and    for    the    particular    hierarchies, 
pohcies,  and  disciplines  of  the  church,  they  be  left  at 
large.     And  therefore  it  is  good  we  return  imto  the 
ancient  bands  of  unity  in  the  Church  of  God,  which 
was  one  faith,  one  baptism,  and  not,  one  hierarchy, 
one  discipline  ;    and  that  we  observe  the  league  of 
Christians,  as  it  is  penned  by  our  Saviour  Christ ; 
which  is  in  substance  of  doctrine  this,  He  that  is  not 
with  us  is  against  us  ;   but  in  things  indifferent  and 
but  of  circumstance  this.  He  that  is  not  against  us,  is 
with  us:  11    There  is  much  in  Bacon's  Essays  that 
is   suggested   by   and   is   highly   pertinent   to   the 
political  conditions  and  problems  of  his  times,  and 
in  writmg  on  *  Unity  in  Rehgion  '  he  was  impelled 
to   insist    that   '  they   be   two  things,   Unity  and 
Uniformity,'   and   to  utter  warning  against   *  two 
false  peaces  or  unities  :   the  one,  when  the  peace  is 
groimded  but  upon  an  impHcit  ignorance ;    for  all 
colours  will  agree  in  the  dark  :   the  other,  when  it 
is  pieced  up  upon  a  direct  admission  of  contraries  in 
fundamental  points  ;    for  truth  and  falsehood  in 
such  things  are  like  the  iron  and  clay  in  the  toes 
of  Nebuchadnezzar's  image — they  may  cleave,  but 
they  will  not  incorporate.'     '  We  see  the  coat  of  our 
Saviour  was  entire  without  seam,  and  so  is  the 
doctrine  of  the  scriptures  in  itself  ;  but  the  garment 
of  the  church  was  of  divers  colours  and  yet  not 
divided.    We  see  the  chaff  may  and  ought  to  be 

B 


18      STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

severed  from  the  com  in  the  ear,  but  the  tares  may 
not  be  puUed  up  from  the  com  in  the  field.   So  it  is  a 
thing  of  great  use  weU  to  define  what,  and  of  what 
latitude   those  points   are,   which   do   make   men 
merely  ahens  and  disincorporate  from  the  Church 
of  God  '  :  thus  wrote  Bacon  in  making  '  as  it  were  a 
smaU  globe  of  the  mteUectual  world  '—in  the  making 
of  his  '  oblation '  to  James  i.,  Of  the  Proficiencie 
and  Advancement  of  Learning,  Divine  and  Human.^^ 
Bacon  thought  that  civil  knowledge  or  pohtics  was 
the  most  difficult  to  reduce  to  axioms,  but  he  gave 
the  assurance  that,  while  generaUties  are  barren  and 
the  multipHcity  of  single  or  isolated  facts  only  pre- 
sents confusion,  *  the  middle  principles  alone  are  soHd, 
orderly  and  fmitful.'    Bacon,  inquirer  and  Politique, 
sought  vera  ilia  et  media  axiormta.    Bacon  desider- 
ated them  for  the  Church  also.    But  his  bias  was 
towards  the  ecclesiastical  at  the  expense  of  the 
reUgious  ;  and  he  viewed  the  ecclesiastical  with  the 
eyes  of  the  Stat^-of  a  State  which  he  wished  to  be 
a  harmony,  at  a  tune  when  it  was   the   hardest 
problem  of  rule  to  equip  and  define  the  State  as  the 
State  of  a  genuine  commonwealth. 

Bacon's  point  of  view  led  him  to  two  practical 
injunctions :  first,  he  was  so  far  with  the  Puritans 
of  his  day  that  he  was  in  favour  of  curtaihng  the 
powers  of  the  bishops,  of  increasing  the  powers  of 
Convocation,  and  of  restoring  ^  prophesy ings  '  as 
training-grounds  for  preachers ;    and  second,  like 


BACON,   MILTON,   LATTD  :  THREE   POINTS   OF  VIEW    19 

Hooker  and  like  Laud,  he  held  that  the  Puritans 
were  wrong — that  they  did  a  wrong — ^in  fixing  on 
the  Church  of  Rome  as  a  standard  by  which  to  judge 
what  they  deemed  excesses  and  errors  in  doctrine 
and  worship  in  the  Church  of  England  :  the  Church 
of  England  was  thereby  not  being  judged  on  its  own 
merits. 

Bacon  was  neither  ideaUst  nor  mere  opportunist, 
whether  for  the  kingship  or  for  Episcopacy,  for  State 
or  for  Church.  Let  the  forms,  ceremonies,  dignity  of 
kingship  and  of  Church  be  upheld,  but  these  are  not 
the  all-in-all :  let  the  rulers  in  Church,  as  in  State, 
rule  in  full  knowledge  of  things  as  they  are,  and,  as 
behoves  men  who  should  be  observant  and  prudent, 
let  them  discriminate  between  the  essential  and  the 
non-essential :  goodwill  there  should  be :  conces- 
sions there  must  be  :  let  work  be  efficient,  service 
beneficent.  It  was  a  via  media  Bacon  was  pointing 
out  in  Church  as  in  State — a  development  and 
adaptation  of  that  middle  way  which  had  been 
preferred,  but  had  never  been  securely  defined  and 
followed,  in  that  reign  of  the  sovereign  whose 
achievements  he  glorified — a  queen  of  whom  it  was 
said  by  a  judge,  who  was  reminded  of  his  words  by 
Bacon,  that  she  must  be  thought  of,  not  as  *  a  statute 
queen,'  but  as  *  a  common-law  queen.'  ^^  It  was  a 
path  more  difficult  still  to  see  and  to  follow  when 
Puritan  was  in  league  with  Common  Law  under  a  king 
who  enhanced  and  theorised  on  his  prerogative  and 


20        STTOIBS   IN   BBITTSH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

laid  down  that  only  that  is  '  the  true  religion  'jhich 
'bymyseH  isprofessed  andby  thelawisestabhshed. 
For  the  Church  it  was  perilously  inadequate  as  a 
foundation ;  and  for  Bacon,  in  the  perversity  of  cir- 
cumstance of  his  time,  it  could  hardly  be  the  path 
of   expectation   and   of   hope.     By   reason   of   the 
force  of  circumstances,  both  personal  and  externa 
to  himself,  he  came  to  oppose  agitation  instead  ot 
continuing  in  sympathy  with  'criticism  and  being 
tolerant  of  differences  :  he  took  his  stand,  as  a  man 
of  State  affairs,  for  that  which  was  '  determined  and 
ordered  '  ^^  in  religion  by  the  authorities  in  the  land. 
It  is  not  to  be  charged  against  him  as  failure  to 
discern  or  as  evidence  of  dishonesty  in  mmd  and 
intention.     And  yet  Bacon,  prudent  and  practical 
as  he  wished  to  be,  Uke  many  other  men  with  a 
reputation  for  '  prudence,'  did  not  allow  enough  for 
this,  that,  whereas  a  compromise  on  non-essentials 
for  expediency,  can  and  does  succeed,  an  attempt  at 
compromise  by  surrender  of  principles-by  ignormg 
essentials-is    foredoomed   to    faUure,   even    more 
disastrously  in  religion  than  in  poUtics. 

It  is  justat  this  critical  point  that  MUton  confronts 
Bacon.  The  mind  of  Milton-his  outlook-is  not 
more  comprehensive  than  that  of  Bacon-than  that 
of  him  who  took  aU  knowledge  for  his  provmce. 
But  he  is  more  distinctively  the  thinker  than  Bacon. 
Like  Dante  he  responded  to  the  call  for  service  to 
the  State  :  he  silenced  his  Muse  to  serve  his  country. 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE   POINTS  OP  VIEW    21 

But  he  is  much  less  than  Bacon  a  man  of  State 
affairs.  His  habit  of  mind  was  formed  before  he 
became  immersed  in  the  politics  of  his  day.  It  was 
because  he  already  felt  strongly,  from  conviction, 
on  the  main  question  of  his  day — it  was  because 
freedom  of  thought  i*  and  liberty  of  conscience, 
'  God's  secretary,'  were  vital  to  him — that  the  poet 
became  for  others  pamphleteer,  and  entered  the 
service  of  the  State  under  Cromwell. 

There  is  much  in  Milton's  prose  writings  that  is 
not  only  impassioned,  but  bitter  and  extreme :  it 
was  an  age  of  acute  antagonisms  and  savage  polemics. 
But  he  stands  for  the  Independent  at  the  highest 
and  noblest  point  of  Independency.  His  politics, 
in  respect  of  the  kingship  of  his  time,  were  extreme  : 
from  the  premiss  that  kingship  is  a  trust  he  argued 
even  to  a  defence  and  duty  of  tyrannicide,^'  because 
freedom  of  conscience  was  impossible  for  him  under 
the  English  kmgship  of  his  day.  And  yet  Milton  was 
an  opponent  as  much  of  unfettered  Uberty  in  the 
nation  as  of  unrestrained  authority  in  the  State.  He 
did  not  advocate  a  democracy  untempered.  The 
people  are  'exorbitant  and  excessive  in  all  their 
motions,'  i*  and  there  is  '  in  number  little  virtue,  but 
by  weight  and  measure  wisdom  working  all  things.'  i* 

'  Licence  they  mean  when  they  cry  liberty  ; 
For  who  loves  that  must  first  be  wise  and  good.'  *" 

'  Nor  is  there  any  sociable  perfection  in  this  life  civil 


22        STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

or  sacred  that  can  be  above  discipline,  but  she  is 
that  which  with  her  musical  cords  preserves  and 
holds  aU  the  parts  thereof  together  '  21— a  tribute  by 
Milton  hardly  less  lofty  than  Hooker's  *  celebrated 
sentence'  on  law  at  the  close  of  the  first  book 
of  his  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  although  it  is  harder 
in  the  case  of  MHton  than  in  the  case  of  Hooker, 
of  Bacon,  or  of  Burke  to  weave  such  a  tribute 
into  the  general  texture  of  his  poUtics ;  and  with 
Hooker    it  was   made    a   plea   for   a  well-ordered 

episcopacy. 

In  the  spiritual  sphere  men  cannot  be  forced. 
Let  truth  and  error  grapple  ;  the  issue  will  be  good. 
Milton  has  faith  in  the  triumph  of  the  truth.  For 
him  no  State  consideration  was  involved.  The  State 
should  not  mterfere.  The  freedom  sought  was  a 
freedom  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  State.  There- 
fore, he  was  as  much  opposed  to  a  Presbyterian 
disciphne  as  to  the  Laudian  regime.  After  the 
triumph  over  Charles  i.  and  Laud,  the  Presbyterians 
of  the  Long  ParUament  were  '  the  new  forcers  of 
conscience '  : 

'  Men,  whose  Ufe,  learning,  faith  and  pure  intent 
Would  have  been  held  in  high  esteem  by  Paul, 
Must  now  be  named  and  printed  heretics 
By  shallow  Edwards  and  Scotch  What-d'  ye-call. 

New  presbyter  is  but  old  priest  writ  large/ 22 

Milton  besought  the  Presbyterians  *  not  to  compel 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE   POINTS   OF  VIEW    23 

unforcible  things,  in  rehgion  especially,  which,  if 
not  voluntary,  becomes  a  sin.'  ^  More  than  Hooker, 
since  he  is  not,  like  Hooker,  committed  to  a 
State  Church,  Milton  looks  from  within.  He  lays 
stress  on  spirit  and  ideal  more  than  on  letter  and 
organisation.  There  is  no  country  so  famous  for 
firm,  strong  oaks  as  England,  Jeremiah  Burroughs 
in  a  sermon  to  the  Lords  remarked,  with  a  view 
to  adding  :  '  You  will  find  EngHsh  consciences  to 
be  so.' 

Milton's  ideal  of  Christian  tolerance  was  not 
attained  :  in  his  age  it  was  not  attainable.  But  it 
has  elements  that  proved  enduring.  '  These  are  the 
men  cried  out  against  for  schismatics  and  sectaries, 
as  if,  while  the  Temple  of  the  Lord  was  building — 
some  cutting,  some  squaring  the  marble,  others 
hewing  the  cedars — there  should  be  a  sort  of  irrational 
men  who  could  not  consider  there  must  be  many 
schisms  and  many  dissections  made  in  the  quarry 
and  in  the  timber  ere  the  House  of  God  can  be  built. 
And  when  every  stone  is  laid  artfully  together,  it 
cannot  be  united  into  a  continuity — it  can  but  be 
contiguous  in  this  world  :  neither  can  every  piece  of 
the  building  be  of  one  form  :  nay,  rather,  the  per- 
fection consists  in  this,  that  out  of  many  moderate 
varieties  and  brotherly  dissimihtudes,  that  are  not 
vastly  disproportional,  arises  the  goodly  and  grace- 
ful symmetry  that  commends  the  whole  pile  and 
structure.    Let  us,  therefore,  be  more  considerate 


24       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

builders,  more  wise  in  spiritual  architecture,  where 
great  reformation  is  expected/  ^ 

We  have  taken  Milton  out  of  his  time,  but  not  out 
of  his  place.    The  standpoint  he  adopted,  the  Ime 
of  reasoning    he   pursued,  consequences   involved, 
were  known  to  Laud.    Milton  held  that  there  is  a 
certain  attraction-— a  magnetic  force— between  the 
rehgion  and  its  ministerial  form  ;  that  if  the  religion 
be  '  pure,  spiritual,  simple  and  lowly,  as  the  Gospel 
most  truly  is,  such  must  the  face  of  the  ministry 
be  '  ;  whereas,  if  the  ministerial  form  *  be  grounded 
in  the  worldly  degrees  of  authority,  honour,  temporal 
jurisdiction,  we  see  it  with  our  own  eyes  it  will  turn 
the  mward  power  and  purity  of  the  Gospel  into  the 
outward  camahty  of  the  law,  evaporating  and  ex- 
haling the  internal  worship  into  empty  conformities 
and  gay  shows.'  ^s    As  for '  the  long  and  hot  contest,' 
whether  Protestants  should  tolerate  one  another,  if 
men  would  be  but '  rational  and  not  partial  '—such 
was  the  plea  of  Hooker  as  appropriately  as  of  Milton 
—it  might  be  ended  '  without  need  of  more  words  to 
compose  it.'     But  Popery  is  '  a  double  thing  to  deal 
with,  and  claims  a  twofold  power,  ecclesiastical  and 
poUtical,  both  usurped,  and  the  one  supporting  the 
other.'  26    The  Church  of  Rome  attaches  men  to  a 
*  Roman  principahty '  rather  than  to  a  rehgion  :  if 
her  adherents  are  not  to  be  tolerated,  it  is  '  for  just 
reason  of  state  more  than  of  rehgion.'  ^^ 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE  POINTS  OP  VIEW    25 

The  situation  was  fully  formed,  and  had  to  be 
faced  by  Laud,  before  Milton  abandoned,  for  a  time, 
poetry  for  politics. 

History  tells  of  forces  and  movements,  not  merely 
of  facts  and  events.  In  reviewing  the  past  we  have 
to  appreciate  movement  of  mind,  the  translation 
of  mind  into  action,  the  imperfections  in  all  such 
translation,  the  clash  between  mind  and  deed, 
between  what  is  desired  and  what  is  made  manifest 
and  actual,  the  resulting  protest  and,  it  may  be, 
consequent  revolution.  There  are  conditions  and 
times  when  a  stand  must  be  made  against  the  onset 
of  these  forces  of  protest,  if  the  threatened  institution 
— if  that  which  is  estabhshed  and  is  being  assailed — 
is  not  to  lose  its  identity  and,  it  is  possible,  perish 
utterly.  Such  are  the  crises  of  history.  It  was  at 
one  of  these  crises  that  Strafford  made  his  stand  for 
*  the  monarchy  ' — or  a  monarchy,  and  Laud  for  *  the 
Church  ' — or  a  Church.  Strafford  and  Laud,  as 
their  intimate  correspondence  sufficiently  reveals, 
were  fellow-workers,  and  not  for  Charles  merely, 
but  in  a  policy  and  for  a  principle — the  poUcy  of 
order  with  a  view  to  solidarity  and  strength,  the 
principle  of  authority  against  an  overweening  temper, 
an  overstrained  hberty.  Strafford  and  Laud  are 
notable  as  administrators  rather  than  great  in  states- 
manship. Each  had  the  defects  of  his  quaUties  : 
theirs  were  rather  the  imaginings  that  spring  from 
fear  for  what  has  been,  than  the  imagination  that 


26       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

goes  forth  with  hopefuhiess  to  what  may  be.    But 
it  is  not  merely  migenerous-it  is  shaUow  and  super- 
fluous-to  try  to  explain  the  poUcy  of  either  of  them 
by  considerations  mainly  of  a  personal  kind-by 
personal  ambition  and  deference  to  the  king  on  the 
part  of  Strafford,  by  a  personal-a  personaUy  and 
keenly  felt-antipathy  to  the  Puritans,  as  men  and 
as  Englishmen,  on  the  part  of  Laud.    A  stand  had 
to  be  made  for  the  Church  of  England-for  a  Church 
of  England  as  a  great  central  Church  for  Englishmen, 
preserving  historic  continuity,  Hnking  the  past  with 

the  present. 

A  constitution  for  a  State  reflects  the  manner  of 
life  chosen,  accepted  or  permitted  by  the  nation  m 
social  relations.     It  determines  frontiers  between 
sovereignty  and  subjection,  between  authority  and 
Uberty  (or  Uberties) ;    and  laws,  framed,  developed 
and  appUed  within  such  constitution,  are  particular 
devices  in  loyalty  to  the  same  general  end.     Our 
eUiptical  expression  is  apt  to  mislead,  or  to  lead  us 
either  too  far  or  not  far  enough  :  '  the  constitution  ' 
is  the  constitution  of  government :    *  the  State  '  is 
the  State  of  the  commonwealth.     It  is  not  other- 
wise with  the  constitution  and  the  laws  of  churches. 
Looking  back,  we  can  see  that  the  differences  in 
doctrine,  in  disciphne,  and  even  in  mental  tone  were 
too  wide  in  Laud's  day  for  incorporation  and  adjust- 
ment  within  a  Church— within  any  defined  Church 
of  thinkers  and  beUevers,  with  a  constitution  of  its 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAUD  :   THREE   POINTS   OF  VIEW    27 

own,  a  constitution  enjoining  standards  and  imposing 
precepts,  a  constitution  distinctive,  to  which  the 
loyalty  of  members  of  the  Church  could  go  out ; 
which  men  could  look  to  as  a  possession — as  their 
own.  This  is  the  justification— the  measure  of 
justification — of  Laud's  assertion  :  *  Unity  cannot 
long  remain  in  the  Church  where  uniformity  is  shut 
out  at  the  Church  door.'  That  also  is  the  justifica- 
tion— ^the  measure  of  justification — for  those  who 
claim  for  Laud  (as  though  he  were  Hooker  in  prac- 
tical Churchmanship),  that  he  saved  the  Church  of 
England. 

The  ground  of  defence  is  not  slender,  but  it  is  not 
secure.     No  decisive  action  is  conceivable,  amid  the 
conditions  that  Laud  had  to  face  and  did  face,  for 
which  the  defence  could  be  secure.    The  spirit  of 
unity  was  being  sought  through  the  letter  :   it  was 
the  mere  letter  that  could  have  been  imposed  on 
the  many  who  were  unwilMng.    The  atmosphere, 
moreover,  was  full  of  suspicions  in  Church  and  in 
State  :   questions  were  not  looked  at  in  themselves, 
and  each  contention  was  viewed  in  its  worst  light. 
Laud,  as  he  frankly  avowed  at  his  trial,  deemed 
Roman  Cathohcs  Christians,  though  not  the  best 
Christians,  and  deemed  thek  Church  a  true  Church, 
though  not  the  truest  Church  ;   and  in  the  poHtics, 
strifes,  asperities  and  fears  of  the  time  it  was  not 
unnatural  for  Presbyterians  and  Independents  to 
charge  him  with  tendencies  to  Romanism,  while  he 


28        STUDIES  IN   BEinSH  HISTORY   AND  POUTICS 

was  merely  striving,  amid  adverse  conditions,  for 
the  advancement  and  security  of  the  Church  m 
England  as  a  cathoUc  church  of  Englishmen.  When 
Presbyterian  and  Independent  thought  of  the  out- 
ward action  taken  and  of  the  Romanist  peril  at 
court  owing  to  the  queen,  they  readily  construed 
AngUcanism  as  sympathetic  more  with  Rome  than 
with  the  Reformation.  It  was  hard  at  the  time  to 
be  an  Anglo-CathoUc— hard  for  one  to  define  him- 
self and  defend  himself. 

The  immediate  future  furnished  a  simUar  measure 
of   justification   of   Laud,    and   of   condemnation. 
Presbytery  failed  to  be  comprehensive  of  Protestants 
or  of  non-Romanist  Christians  :  it  failed  worse  than 
the  Episcopacy  and  Anglicanism  of  Laud.    Inde- 
pendency under  Cromwell  was  recoiled  from  and 
attacked  both  by  Episcopacy  and  by  Presbytery  : 
its  promise  of  toleration  and  of  concord  was  not 
fulfilled     The  Restoration  of  1660  was  a  restoration 
much  more  of  the  Church  of  England-of  the  Church 
of  Laud-than  a  restoration  of  either  the  monarchy 
or  of  the  Parliamentarians.    To  that  extent  the 
Restoration  justified  Laud :    so  far  as  it  was  the 
triumph  of  a  defined  Episcopal  Church,  it  justified 
Laud.    But  with  the  gladness  of  this  Church  restored 
must  be  taken  the  gloom  of  clergy  dispossessed— the 
tragedy  of  England's  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  24th 
August  1662.    So  far,  therefore,  as  Laud  strove  for 
comprehension  of   EngUshmen  within   his  defined 


BACON,   MILTON,   LAtTD  :   THREE  POINTS   OF  VIEW    29 

Church,  his  policy— his  endeavour— was  to  a  striking 
extent  a  failure.  He  failed  where  success  was  impos- 
sible :  it  was  not  possible  at  once  to  defiine  and  to 
comprehend.  He  did  not  fail  where  failure  would 
have  involved  disaster— loss  of  continuity,  loss  of 
identity— to  the  Church  as  an  historic  Church  of 
England. 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE  GROUP 

•  If  we  promote  scholarships  for  Americans  in  our  Universities ; 
give  posts  and  benefits  in  America,  to  such  Americans  who  have 
studied  here,  preferably  to  others:  if  the  Government  permits  such 
youth  as  come  to  Europe,  on  account  of  their  studies,  to  come 
over  in  the  King's  ships  gratis,  we  shaU  still  unite  them  more 
firmly.  The  Americans,  by  uniting  with  our  own  youth,  at  the 
University,  will  diffuse  a  spirit  of  enquiry  after  America  and  its 
affairs  ;  they  will  cement  friendships  on  both  sides,  which  will  be 
of  more  lasting  benefits  to  both  countries,  than  aU  the  armies 
that  Britain  can  send  tliither.' 

These  words  of  a  well-meaning  Rhodesian  before 
Rhodes  come  from  a  pamphlet  ^  pubUshed  m 
London  in  the  year  of  the  Stamp  Act. 

The  author,  John  Fothergill,  had  been  a  distin- 
guished medical  student  at  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh. He  took  part,  with  two  or  three  others,  in 
the  *  humble  and  fortuitous '  beginnings  of  the  Edm- 
burgh  Medical  (later,  the  Royal  Medical)  Society. 
He  graduated  in  1730— the  year  before  the  Society 
was  formally  instituted.  He  was  the  first  Edinburgh 
graduate  to  be  admitted  a  Licentiate  of  the  College 
of  Physicians,  and  for  many  years  was  well  known 
in  the  cultured  community  of  the  London  of  his 


AN  AMBBICAN-INDBPBNDBNCB   GEOUP 


31 


day.  Fothergill  was  somewhat  disputatious ;  but 
Benjamin  Franklin  placed  him  *  among  the  best 
men  '  he  had  known.^ 

The  opening  sentences  of  Fothergill's  pamphlet 
are  in  their  impressiveness  worthy  almost  of  Thomas 
Pownall,  whose  able  work,  The  Administration  of  the 
Colonies  (Part  i.),^  had  been  published,  like  the  more 
influential  work  of  James  Otis,*  in  the  year  before 
the  Stamp  Act  was  passed.  *  The  affairs  of  North 
America/  writes  Fothergill  at  this  critical  time, '  are 
of  so  much  importance  to  this  kingdom,  that  I  make 
no  apology  for  offering  a  few  thoughts  on  this  subject, 
for  the  consideration  of  the  pubHc.  For  whether 
we  look  at  the  well-being  and  content  of  near  two 
million  of  EngUsh  subjects,  on  that  continent, 
descended  from  and  inseparably  connected  with 
ourselves  ;  or  weigh  the  effects  which  their  discon- 
tent and  unhappiness  must  unavoidably  produce  on 
this  country,  scarce  a  more  important  object  can 
present  itself  to  an  EngUshman.'  Not  even  the 
Puritan  struggle  in  England  called  forth  abler  and 
nobler  poHtical  thought  than  this  American  problem  ; 
and,  where  the  standard  is  so  high,  Fothergill'^ 
pamphlet  does  not  rank  with  either  the  ablest  or 
the  noblest.  But  it  is  a  well-informed  statement 
and  an  earnest  warning.  Li  its  discussion  of 
commercial  restrictions,  of  the  impoHcy  of  the 
Stamp  Bill,  and  of  the  liberties  due  to  colonists  as 
Britons  under  the  protection  of  the  British  Crown, 


32       STUDIES  IN  BEinSH  HISTOEY  AlID  POLITICS 

it  does  not  substantiaUy  difier  from  the  ordinary 
way  in  which  contemporary  writers  and  speakers 
presented  the  case  against  the  Home  Government^ 
?n  at  least  three  of  its  '  considerations,'  however,  the 
pamphlet  has  some  claim  to  distinction.    Not  only 
did  it  reject  as  absurd  the  contention  that  the 
colonists,  hke  the  many  non-electo^  .?,  ^^2' 
were  '  virtually '  represented  m  the  British  Parlia- 
ment, but  it  argued  that  the  P-^^ril^g  .''°"^P*^°'; 
in  British  parhamentary  Ufe,  and  the  difficulty  of 
colonial  members  in  a  British  Parliament  keepmg 
in  touch  with  their  constituents  at  a  distance  were 
cogent  reasons  why  the  colonists  should  not  send 
representatives  to  the  ParUament  sitting  at  West- 
mLter.^    Secondly,  it  distinguished  between  the 
omni-competence  or  power  and  the  right,  or  the 
expediency  of  exercising  the  rights,  of  the  Bn^h 
ParUament :    '  a  British  Parliament  has  certamly 
pother  to  do  many  thmgs  which  they  have  no  rr^M 
to  do '  «    Thirdly,  it  uttered  a  much-needed  plea 
for  better  and  more  widely  diffused  informa,tion 
about  the  colonies  :  it  lamented  the  ignorance  of  the 
geography  and  the  history  of  the  colomes     not 
among  the  vulgar  only '  m  Britain-an  ignorance 
'  the  more  mexcusable,'  as  there  were  '  not  want- 
ing many  useful  treatises  upon  these  subjects. 
Fothergill  thus  insisted  that  there  should  be  know- 
ledge before  action,  and  that  m  action  there  should 
be  caution  and  sympathy.    In  admitting  so  much 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROtTP 


33 


we  are  conceding  that  his  work,  viewed  in  its  time 
and  circumstances,  is  a  work  of  political  merit. 

Fothergill  espoused  that  cause  of  the  Americans 
which  is  said  to  have  prevailed.    But  we  must 
d^criminate.     The  American  cause  became  a  con- 
tention ;   the  ideal  became,  or  took  the  form  of,  an 
interest ;  the  interest  required  an  organisation  ;  and 
the  organisation  became  militant  for  its  own  separate 
and  separatist  objects.     The  true  American  '  cause  ' 
was  a  cause  of  constitutionaUsm,  but  of  constitu- 
tionalism for  Britons  in  North  America,  to  be  defined 
or    made    acceptable    within    the    still    undefined 
constitutionalism  of  one  British  people  :    it  was  a 
constitutionaUsm  then,  as  it  still  is  to-day,  perhaps 
indefinable  or  better  left  undefined,  for  it  owes  even 
more  to  the  spirit  than  to  the  letter.    The  rights 
and  inheritance  of  Britons  at  common  law  and  in 
political  Hberties  were  the  paramount  sovereign  to 
which  loyalty  was  due,  and  to  that  sovereign  the 
tribute  of  respect  and  affection  was  paid  by  the 
protagonists  for  the  colonies  in  the  years  immediately 
succeeding  the  passing  of  the  Stamp  Act.    But 
political  ideal,  founded  in  attachment  to  a  political 
heritage  and  issuing  in  high  poHtical  hope  for  a 
poUtically   gifted  people,   is  greater   than   a   con- 
stitutionalism :    it  is  an  ideal  to  which  constitu- 
tionalists   owe    dihgent    and   faithful    service — the 
fealty  due  of  right  to  a  superior,  and  due  especially 
by  those  who  are  professedly  righteous  :    it  is  as 

0 


34       STUDIES   IN   BKITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

*  the  general  wiU  '  to  Hhe  wiU  of  aU.'    For  there  is 
a  constitutional  righteousness,  correct,  cold  and  un- 
bending, that  may  not  be  poUticaUy  saving.     The 
true  constitutional  ideal  of  1765,  then  upheld  by 
many,  was  an  ideal  at  war  both  with  an  indefinite  pre- 
rogatiVism  and  with  a  presuming  parhamentarianism 
in  Britain,  and  yet  in  service  to  the  poUtical  ideal 
for   Britons;    but   the   achievement   of    1776— an 
achievement  resulting  from  the  errors  and  deeds  of 
foUy  of  the  Home  Government  as  much  as  from 
the  efforts  and  deserts  of  Anglo-American  consti- 
tutionaUsts— was  an  achievement  for  an  American 
constitutionahsm  divorced  from  the  poHtical  ideal 
cherished  by  Britons  for  one  British  people.     It 
was  the  being  faithful  to  this  ideal— this  poUtical 
heritage  and  hope— m  spite  of  the  strain  of  un- 
wise and  inconsiderate  conduct  on  the  part  of  the 
Home    Government,    its    natural   and    constituted 
guardian,  that  separated  those  LoyaUsts  in  America 
whose  voice  had  been  for  constitutional  definition 
and  restraint  from  those  colonial  constitutionaUsts 
who  came  to  think  that  they  could  secure  con- 
stitutionaUsm  for  Americans  only  by  men  them- 
selves become  American,  in  independence  of  Britain. 
The  struggle  in  argument  and  poUcy  was  a  very 
hard  one,  and,  even  as  late  as  1776,  a  very  close  one, 
in  America,  between  Independence  and  Loyahsm. 
Historical  writers,  in  deference  to  the  claims  of  a 
search  for  Truth,  no  longer  read  Destiny  into  facts, 


AN  AMBRICAN-INDBPENDENCE   GEOUP 


35 


and  yet  too  often  they  bind  themselves  as  by  a 
chain  to  '  the  result,'  holding  fast  to  '  the  result '  as 
to  that  which  is  established  and  safe  ;    and  *  the 
result,'  it  has  been  said,  especially  where  a  revolution 
is  effected,  *  usually  becomes  intermingled  with  our 
judgment  of  the  principles  of  right  in  question, 
although  the  former  is  always  uncertain  in  fact, 
whereas   the   latter   are   always   certain   in   them- 
selves.' ®    The  American  Revolution  took  place  and 
was  *  successful ' :  its  *  origins '  have  to  be  discovered ; 
and  thus  economic  forces,   poUtical  opportunities 
(added  to  after  the  ousting  of  the  French  as  rulers 
from    Canada),    constitutional    necessities,    mental 
habits,  and  even  dim  anticipations  and  prophetic 
utterances,   are  marshaUed  in  imposing  array   to 
constitute,  historicaUy,  a  new  *  situation  '  and  to 
make  up  a  *  general  cause,'  and  thus  compel  the 
conclusion  that  separation  was  *  inevitable.'     But 
any  one  who  brings  himself  into  the  heart  of  this 
struggle,  as  it  is  revealed  in  thought,  word  and  deed 
during  the  years  that  are  of  consequence  in  consider- 
ing the  crisis — those  between  the  passing  of  the 
Stamp  Act  and  the  skirmish  at  Lexington — comes 
to  reaUse  the  danger  of  magnifying  the  explanatory 
force  of  the  *  general  cause  '  and  of  tendency  in 
history,  and,  while  he  sees  the  bitter  fruit  of  the 
impoUcy  that  was  persevered  in,  he  also  makes 
aUowance  for  the  saving  quaUties  of  a  statesmanship 
that  was  invoked  but  was  withheld.     The  force  of 


36        STUDIES  IN   BKITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITIOS 

the  argument,  indeed,  from  the  '  general  cause '  is 
with  those  who  deny  that  the  colonies  were  ripe, 
or  were  ripening,  for  a  separate  and  independent 
United  State ;  and  historians  are  not  concerned, 
essentially  or  appropriately,  with  what  might  have 
been,  or  would  probably  have  come,  at  a  later  time, 
and,  it  may  be,  without  pressure,  amid  other  circum- 
stances and  dispositions  than  those  which  have  to  be 
measured  and  reasoned  from  by  them. 

There  are  several  powerful  and  almost  determmmg 
considerations  against  the  conclusion  of  inevitable- 
ness.    (1)  When,  before  1775,  colonists  spoke  and 
wrote  of  'independence,'   what  they  meant  was 
independence  of  the  ParUament  sitting  at  West- 
minster—a limit,  at  least,  to  its  assumption  of  omni- 
competence,  and  power  to  their  own  AssembUes  in 
a  sphere  marked  out  as  their  own  under  the  Crown 
accepted  by   all  Britons.    We   can   see   that  the 
attitude   was   constitutionally   an   unstable   one— 
that  it  was  an  attitude  difficult  to  maintain  owing 
to  the  differences  between  the  traditional  forms  and 
the  conquering  realities  of  the  constitution.    The 
Crown  was,  normaUy,  no  longer  in  itseK  a  poUtical 
power :  even  its  mediating  function  could  be  exercised 
only  with  the  support  and  by  the  goodwill  of  the 
Houses  of  ParUament :    since  the  Revolution,  the 
Crown  had  come  more  and  more  to  be  controlled  by 
ParUament,  and  by  party  and  majorities,  with  the 
interests  of  England  the  dominant  interests.    It  was 


AN  AMERICAN-INDKPENDENCE   GROITP 


37 


this   constitutional   situation   that,  taken  with  its 
poHtical  and  practical  bearings,  had  been  sufficient 
to  make  the  union  of  the  Scottish  Parliament  with 
the  Enghsh  pohtically  expedient  for  the  Scottish 
people  in  1707  :   the  Crown  and  supreme  executive, 
common  to  England  and  Scotland,  were  a  Crown 
and  executive  subject  to  control  by  the  stronger 
and  more  present  law-making  and  money-granting 
body,  and  it  seemed  that  Scottish  rights  and  interests 
would    be    less    ineffectually    safeguarded    by    the 
presence    and    proportionate    power    of    Scottish 
representatives  in  a  British  ParUament,  possessing 
means  of  controlling  the  executive,  than  by  these 
representatives  possessing  in  a  Scottish  ParUament 
even  a  monopoly  of  a  power,  which  was  becoming 
more  and  more  shadowy  whenever  the  interests  of 
Scotsmen  required  pressure  to  be  put  upon  the 
executive-in-chief  against  the  claims  of  EngUshmen. 
At  first,  and  for  some  years,  there  were  colonists 
who    advocated    colonial    representation    in    the 
ParUament  in  Britain.     GraduaUy,  that  ground  was 
abandoned  by  men  of  note  and  influence,  except 
by  a  few.     Even,  however,  with  the  power  of  the 
ParUament  at  Westmmster  over  the  Crown  accepted, 
in  spite  of  George  m.'s  belated  aspu:ations,  as  a 
constitutional  necessity,  the  sequel  of  the  relations 
between  mother-country  and  colonies  after  1783  is 
adequate  testimony  that  the  problem  was  not  consti- 
tutionaUy  insoluble  :    the  Crown,  even  as  a  symbol 


38       STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

only,  could  have  been  poUticaUy  powerful  in  binding 
and  maintaining  where  language  and  a  heritage  in 
ideas,  the  weight  both  of  national  sentiment  and  of 
cherished  securities,  aU  predisposed  men  in  favour 
of  association  and  in  the  direction  of  partnership. 

Even  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War  some  readjustment  of  relations  was  seen  by 
many  to  be  desirable  and  expedient.     It  was  only 
through  apathy,  neglect  and  lack  of  foresight  in 
statesmanship,  that  an  American  question  became 
the  American  Question  of  history.    With  a  course 
of  impoUcy  embarked  upon  by  the  Home  Govern- 
ment, and  amid  the  suspicions  that  were  active 
between  1765  and  1775,  it  would  have  been  difficult 
for  those  to  whom  the  impoHcy  and  much  of  the 
suspicion  were  due  to  formulate  a  scheme  which 
should  draw  to  itself  the  confidence  and  the  respect 
of  those  whom  it  was  to  affect.    But  what  was 
mainly    sought    and    required    was    the    token    of 
sincerity  and  trustr-some  mark  of  an  acceptance 
of  the  Britons  of  the  colonies  into  a  partnership 
with  the  Britons  of  the  mother-coimtry  ;    and  in 
both    Britain    and    America    there    was    sufficient 
poUtical  talent  to  devise  a  scheme  that  had  no  need 
to  be  definitive  and  could  not  have  been  final. 

(2)  There  was  time  for  British  statesmanship  to 
reveal  itself  and  intervene.  Ten  years  of  a  war  of 
words  and  measures  preceded  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  against  Nature.    During  these  ten  years  Uttle 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


39 


\ 


was  done  by  ministers  at  home  to  view  the  American 
Question  as  a  question  affecting  Americans:  the 
mind  of  those  in  authority  in  Britain  was  seldom 
thrown  in  impartial  scrutiny  across  the  Atlantic  : 
even  rudimentary  sympathy  and  imagination  were 
not  brought  into  play. 

(3)  Pre-eminently  it  was  a  question  in  which  move- 
ment of  mind  had  to  be  watched  and  reckoned  with. 
The  mind  of  colonists  had  to  be  transformed  before 
the  thought  of  war  with  their  *  home '  ^  could  be 
admitted  by  them,  and  before  the  word  *  Indepen- 
dence '  could  be  uttered.  The  pamphlet  and  the 
press  lost  the  American  colonies  to  Britain  :  but 
for  them  there  could  not  have  been  this  movement 
and  transformation  of  mind.  But  it  was  through 
indiscreet  utterances  and  impolitic  acts  that  the 
opportunity  came  to  the  pamphlet  and  press  of  the 
Opposition,  to  its  organisers  and  to  propagandists. 

(4)  'During  the  course  of  my  life,'  wrote  Jay, 
*  and  until  the  second  petition  of  Congress  in  1775, 
I  never  did  hear  any  American  of  any  class,  or  any 
description,  express  a  wish  for  the  independence  of 
the  colonies.'  ^^  In  spite  of  the  years  of  agitation 
and  conflict,  and  notwithstanding  the  activity  and 
success  of  Samuel  Adams  and  his  fellow-workers  in 
organising  opposition  to  the  demands  and  conten- 
tions of  the  British  Government,  there  was  only  a 
slender  majority  of  colonists— if  a  majority  at  all— 
for  Independence  in  1776  ;   and  there  seems  ahnost 


38       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

only,  could  have  been  poHticaUy  powerful  in  binding 
and  maintaining  where  language  and  a  heritage  in 
ideas,  the  weight  both  of  national  sentiment  and  of 
cherished  securities,  aU  predisposed  men  in  favour 
of  association  and  in  the  direction  of  partnership. 

Even  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War  some  readjustment  of  relations  was  seen  by 
many  to  be  desirable  and  expedient.     It  was  only 
through  apathy,  neglect  and  lack  of  foresight  in 
statesmanship,  that  an  American  question  became 
the  American  Question  of  history.    With  a  course 
of  impoUcy  embarked  upon  by  the  Home  Govern- 
ment, and  amid  the  suspicions  that  were  active 
between  1765  and  1775,  it  would  have  been  difficult 
for  those  to  whom  the  impoUcy  and  much  of  the 
suspicion  were  due  to  formulate  a  scheme  which 
should  draw  to  itself  the  confidence  and  the  respect 
of  those  whom  it  was  to  affect.    But  what  was 
mainly    sought    and    requked    was    the   token    of 
sincerity  and  trust— some  mark  of  an  acceptance 
of  the  Britons  of  the  colonies  into  a  partnership 
with  the  Britons  of  the  mother-country  ;    and  in 
both    Britain    and    America    there    was    sufficient 
poUtical  talent  to  devise  a  scheme  that  had  no  need 
to  be  definitive  and  could  not  have  been  final. 

(2)  There  was  time  for  British  statesmanship  to 
reveal  itself  and  intervene.  Ten  years  of  a  war  of 
words  and  measures  preceded  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  against  Nature.    During  these  ten  years  Httle 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


39 


was  done  by  ministers  at  home  to  view  the  American 
Question  as  a  question  affecting  Americans:  the 
mmd  of  those  in  authority  in  Britain  was  seldom 
thrown  in  impartial  scrutiny  across  the  Atlantic  : 
even  rudimentary  sympathy  and  imagination  were 
not  brought  into  play. 

(3)  Pre-eminently  it  was  a  question  in  which  move- 
ment of  mind  had  to  be  watched  and  reckoned  with. 
The  mind  of  colonists  had  to  be  transformed  before 
the  thought  of  war  with  their  *  home '  ®  could  be 
admitted  by  them,  and  before  the  word  *  Indepen- 
dence '  could  be  uttered.  The  pamphlet  and  the 
press  lost  the  American  colonies  to  Britain  :  but 
for  them  there  could  not  have  been  this  movement 
and  transformation  of  mind.  But  it  was  through 
indiscreet  utterances  and  impoHtic  acts  that  the 
opportunity  came  to  the  pamphlet  and  press  of  the 
Opposition,  to  its  organisers  and  to  propagandists. 

(4)  'During  the  course  of  my  life,'  wrote  Jay, 
*  and  until  the  second  petition  of  Congress  in  1775, 
I  never  did  hear  any  American  of  any  class,  or  any 
description,  express  a  wish  for  the  independence  of 
the  colonies.'  ^^  In  spite  of  the  years  of  agitation 
and  conflict,  and  notwithstanding  the  activity  and 
success  of  Samuel  Adams  and  his  fellow-workers  in 
organising  opposition  to  the  demands  and  conten- 
tions of  the  British  Government,  there  was  only  a 
slender  majority  of  colonists— if  a  majority  at  all— 
for  Independence  in  1776  ;  and  there  seems  ahnost 


40       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

every  ground  for  maintaining  that  at  that  time  and 
for  some  time  later  a  majority  of  the  '  influential 
characters '  (to  use  John  Adams's  expression)  were 
agamst  it.    Many   of  these   had   a   constitutional 
theory  or  principle— a  reasoned-out  groimd  of  liberty 
and  authority— -to   support  their  preference.     For 
many    pohtical    ideal    transcended    constitutional 
theory,  and  excesses  in  colonial  argument  and  con- 
duct strengthened  them  in  their  attachment  to  a 
mother-country  which  (as  some  of  them  avowed) 
had  suffered  less  from  its  critics  than  from  its  own 
official,  though  not  representative,  spokesmen  and 
agents.    United   Empire   Loyahsm— the  greater— 
which  was  professed  and  adhered  to  in  unfavouring 
ckcumstances,    was   vanquished   by   an   American 
constitutionalism    and    '  nationalism '—the    less— 
which  found  and  improved  its  opportunity. 

The  part  taken  in  this  struggle  in  America  before 
the  Fourth  of  July  1776  by  men  educated  in  the 
University  of  Edinburgh  has  not  hitherto  been  in- 
vestigated—has not,  perhaps,  been  thought  of— and 
cannot,  either  easily  or  exactly,  be  determined.  But 
it  is  probable— it  is  not  the  most  impossible  of  histori- 
cally ventured  probables— that,  had  an  Edinburgh- 
trained  Virginian,  resident  for  some  years  in  London, 
and  the  Edinburgh-trained  men  in  America  stood  firm 
for  the  ideal  of  United  Empire  Loyalism,  amid  the 
trying  conditions  of  1766-76,  Independence  would 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


41 


not  in  1776  have  gained  the  day  :    their  influence 
could  have  been  decisive. 

One  of  the  striking  features  of  the  life  of  the 
University   of   Edinburgh   about   the  time   when, 
during  the  Seven  Years'  War,  the  French  and  the 
British  were  fighting  for  mastery  in  North  America, 
is  the  presence  of  medical  students  from  the  American 
colonies — ^not   less   striking   than   the   presence   of 
colonial  students  at  the  Inns  of  Court  during  the 
same  period.     In  1765,  when  Fothergill  offered  his 
*  few  thoughts  '  without  apology,  out  of  thirteen 
medical  graduates  five  were  American  :  ^^  it  was  an 
exceptional  proportion  which  may  have  had  some 
response    from    Principal    Robertson's  ^^   historical 
sense  of  the  fitness  of  things  in  that  year  of  fatal 
miscalculation.     Fothergill's   academic   imperialism 
cannot  be  justly  tested  :   his  conditions  were  unful- 
filled :     suspicion   gained   ground — a  bad  note   in 
pontics,  and  the  worst,  poUtically,  among  kinsmen. 
But  it  is  possible  to  apply,  partly,  the  test  as  a 
general  one,  subject  to  conditions,  in  the  case  of  two 
colonial  students  who  became  men  of  some  political 
distinction — Arthur  Lee  and  Benjamin  Rush  ;   and 
with  the  second  of  these  we  shall  have  to  associate, 
in  a  great  pohtical  deed,  two  Scotsmen  who  studied 
at  Edinburgh  and  became  Americans  instead  of 
continuing  as  Britons  in  North  America. 

Arthur  Lee  was  a  member  of  one  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished famihes  of   aristocratic  and   poHtically 


42        STTJDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

gifted  Virginia— a  home  of  '  fine  fellows  '  and  some 
*  furious  Whigs.'  In  1754  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh had  conferred  the  honorary  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Laws  on  ^Colonel  Lee,  Virginia.' ^^  ^Light- 
Horse  Harry  '  was  a  cousin  of  Arthur  Lee  and  the 
father  of  the  great  Confederate  general,  Robert  Lee. 
Arthur  Lee  graduated  in  medicine  in  1764.  *  He 
was  an  old  companion  of  mine,'  wrote  Boswell  in 
1776,  'when  he  studied  physic  at  Edinburgh.'^* 
Being  of  Eton  as  well  as  of  Virginia,  qualified  in 
English  law  and  in  medicine,  a  colonial  agent  in 
London,  and  the  Junius  Americanus  of  contemporary 
writing,  perhaps  Arthur  Lee,  dignified  and  self- 
sustaming,  was  able  to  tolerate,  if  he  was  ever 
conscious  or  even  worthy  of,  the  Johnsonian  *  Too, 
too,  too,'  in  Mr.  DiUy's  drawing-room  and  in  the 
company  of  John  Wilkes  in  the  year  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Ladependence.^^ 

He  became  an  active  diplomatist  for  Independence- 
Americans,  but  had  differences  with  his  fellow- 
commissioners— Franklin  and  Silas  Deane— at  Paris. 

*  When  it  became  the  high  United  States 
To  send  their  envoys  to  Yersailles'  proud  gates, 
Were  not  three  ministers  produced  at  once  ] — 
Delicious  group — fanatic,  deist,  dunce  1 
And  what  if  Lee,  and  what  if  Silas  fell, 
Or  what  if  Franklin  should  go  down  to  hell, 
Why  should  we  grieve  1— the  land,  'tis  understood, 
Can  furnish  hundreds  equally  as  good.'  ^^ 
Franklin  (age  :  seventy-two  ;  sturdy  and  confident) 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENOB   GROUP 


43 


resented  the  superior,   *  very  magisterial '  airs  of 
Arthur  Lee  (age  :  thirty-seven  ;  able,  ambitious,  and 
with  the  pride  of  the  Virginian  and  of  the  Lees) — 
resented  being  *  schooled  and  documented '  by  Lee, 
as  if  he  had  been  one  of  his  '  domestics,'  and  told 
him,  besides,  that  he  was  of  a  temper,  *  jealous,  sus- 
picious, malignant  and  quarrelsome.'  ^^    For  Frank- 
lin has  said  that  the  '  disputatious  turn,'  which  he 
himseK  had  in  his  earher  years  through  reading  his 
father's  *  books  of  dispute  about  rehgion,'  is  a  habit 
seldom  found  in  people  of  good  sense '  except  lawyers, 
University  men,  and  men  of  all  sorts  that  have  been 
bred  at  Edinborough,'  ^^    If  we  emphasise  these  last 
words — ^by  fuU  context  not  a  pleasantry — emphasise 
them  inasmuch  as  they  are  a  general  calumny,  of 
which  Arthur  Lee,  lawyer  and  bred  at  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  may  have  been  the  effective  origin, 
let  us  make   an  immediate  addition  :     Benjamin 
Franklin   (himself  calumniated  by  George  in.   as 
*  that  crafty  American ')  was  the  recipient  of  the 
freedom  of  the  city  of  Edinburgh,  partly,  according 
to  the  record,  for  his  '  love  to  all  mankind  '  ;   while 
he  did  not  receive  an  honorary  degree  from  Arthur 
Lee's  university,^^  he  inspired  Principal  Robertson 
to  confer  one  on  other  Americans  ;  ^   and  a  little 
later   the  Principal   came  to    have    such  poHtical 
doubts  regarding  these,  and  such  fears  for  the  honour 
of  the  university,  as  were  only  in  part  allayed  by 
an  able  and  eminent  ex-colonial  governor  ^i — B.A. 


44       STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTOBY  AND  POLITICS 

of  Harvard  and,  on  the  day  before  the  Fourth  of 
July  1776,  D.C.L.  of  Oxford— one  who  had  been  less 
violently  interpreted  by  Franklin  than  was  Franklin 
himself  by  the  forcible  and  'wary'  Wedderbum. 
Still,  the  *  three  letters'  which,  in  spite  of  some 
ejfforts  by  Arthur  Lee,  were  conferred,  before  Privy 
Councillors,  on  Benjamin  FrankUn  at  a  personal 
climax  in  the  course  of  the  American  Question,  by 
Wedderbum,  who  had  been  '  bred  at  Edinburgh,' 
went  a  Httle  beyond  historical  warrant,  and  were 
certainly  contrary  to  academic  propriety  :  *  ...  he 
will  henceforth  esteem  it  a  libel  to  be  called  a  man 
of  letters  :  homo  trium  literarum:  For  Fur  French 
admirers  substituted  Vir.'^'^ 

Fifty-six  members  of  an  historic  Congress  signed 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  23— some  of  them 
previously  distinguished  ;  all,  by  pen-stroke,  famous 
thereafter.     Two  of  them  were  elder  brothers  of 
Arthur  Lee — one  educated  in  America  by  a  Scots- 
man ;     the    other    sent    '  home '    to    a    school    in 
England.     It  was  the  latter— Richard  Henry  Lee, 
the  *  American  Cicero'  of  his  day— who  had  the 
distinction  of  moving  the  resolution  in  Congress  on 
the  7th  of  June  1776,  '  That  these  United  Colonies 
are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  free  and  independent 
states.'     To  him  instead  of  to  Jefferson  almost  fell, 
and  not  without  qualification  would  have  fallen,  the 
honour  of  drafting  the  terms  of  the  Declaration 
of   Independence.    Jefferson's   own   version,   from 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCB   GEOTIP 


45 


which  came  most  of  the  '  glittering  generalities '  2* 
that  a  subsequent  generation,  with  more  poHtical 
acumen  than  the  historical  sense,  has  charged 
against  the  Declaration  as  accepted  and  subscribed, 
Richard  Henry  Lee  criticised  as  '  copied  '  too  much 

from  Locke. 

Three  past  students  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh 
were  among  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  :  the 
Universities  of  St.  Andrews  and  Glasgow  share  in 
the  education  of  one  of  the  three,  and  to  that  ex- 
tent have  their  loyaUsm  impugned  under  this  aUen 
but  supreme  declaratory  test.  Three  Cambridge 
students  were  among  the  new  Patriots  and  Common- 
wealth men.  There  was  none  from  Aberdeen ;  none, 
it  seems,  from  Oxford. 

The  Edinburgh  three,  having  found  it  necessary 
'  to  dissolve  the  political  bands  '  connecting  them 
with  the  home  of  their  families,  their  institutions  and 
their  liberties,  may  be  made  to  do  some  compensatory 
service,  perhaps,  for  their  university— service  more 
varied  than  may  be  claimed  for  the  three  from 
Cambridge  :    (1)  The  signatures  of  the  Edinburgh 
three,  as  of   the   Cambridge   three,   are  decorous 
signatures,  not  bold,  with  heavy,  ahnost  pedestrian, 
pressure,  like  that  of  Harvard-bred  and  Congress 
President  John  Hancock,  who  made  his  so  that 
'George    the    Third    might    read    it    without    his 
spectacles '  ;    (2)  only  one  clergyman  signed  :    he 
was  a  Scottish  Presbyterian  minister— a  graduate 


46        STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

of  Edinburgh  ;  (3)  two  men  who  were  bom  in 
Scotland  signed :  they  had  both  been  students 
at  Edinburgh  ;  (4)  two  of  the  Edinburgh  three,  like 
two  of  the  Cambridge  three,  were  fellow-signers 
for  one  colony  :  those  of  Edinburgh  had  Benjamin 
Franklin  as  an  associate  ;  (5)  disloyal  to  the  better 
poHtics  of  Edinburgh,  the  three  were  loyal  sons  of  a 
home  of  learning,  for  each  gained  university  pre- 
eminence and  became  great  through  work  achieved 
— one  in  divinity  (though  not  exclusively),  one  in  law, 
and  one — the  '  Sydenham  of  America  ' — in  medicine. 
Benjamin  Rush,  for  whom  this  title  was  claimed 
in  his  own  day  and  to  whom  it  has  been  accorded 
since,  was  an  Arts  graduate  of  Princeton  before  he 
came  to  Edinburgh  to  study  medicine.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Medical  Society  in  1766-67  (a  Society 
of  which  he  was  made  an  honorary  member  by 
election  in  1785),  and  he  graduated  in  1768.  He 
was  appointed  in  succession  to  several  chairs  in  the 
medical  department  of  the  recently  established 
College  of  Philadelphia  (later,  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania),  which  had  Franklin  as  its  chief 
promoter  and  WiUiam  Smith  (of  the  University  of 
Aberdeen)  as  its  first  Provost.  There,  in  the  earliest 
medical  college  of  America,  aU  of  Rush's  colleagues 
in  1769,  except  the  clinical  teacher  in  the  hospital, 
were  graduates  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh  : 
John  Morgan  :  graduated  in  1763  ;  on  3rd  May  1765 
the  first  medical  professor  in  America;    WiUiam 


AN   AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


47 


Shippen:    graduated    in    1761;    professor,    1765; 
Adam  Kuhn  :   graduated  in  1767  ;   professor,  1768. 
Benjamin  Rush  was  eminent  alike  as  practitioner, 
teacher,  and  writer.     In  character  he  was  the  most 
sterling  of  those  from  Edinburgh  who  signed  the 
Declaration.    In  his  poUtics  he  had  the  support  of 
his  Edinburgh-trained  university  colleagues.    May 
it  have  been  due  partly  to  this— that,  in  the  days 
when  they  were  students,  Scotsmen  and  English- 
men had  spoken,  as  we  know,  of  *  our '  colonies, 
had  thought  themselves  pieces  of  a  sovereign  over 
America  (as  Franklin  averred  to  a  notable  citizen  of 
Edinburgh), 25  and  had  not  distinguished  between  a 
poUtical  or  national  Britain  and  the  geographical 
expression?     Morgan    (Director-General),    Shippen 
(Chief     Surgeon),    Kuhn    and    Rush    (Physician- 
General)  were  for  a  time  the  chief  members  of  the 
medical  staff  of  the  Revolutionary  army.    Although 
interested,  however,  in  great  political  issues,  and 
known  to  the  student  of  Paine's  Common  Sense,^^ 
Rush  had  less  political  aptitude  than  either  of  the 
Scotsmen— the   lawyer   and   the   ecclesiastic— who 
had  studied  at  Edinburgh. 

One  of  these,  indeed,  James  Wilson,  stood  in  rank 
in  his  day— after  rather  than  before  1776— with 
Alexander  HamHton  and  Madison  for  poHtical 
knowledge.  He  was  bom  near  St.  Andrews.  At 
the  University  of  Edinburgh  he  owed  much  to  Hugh 
Blair.    For  his  skill,  however,  and  eminence  in  law 


48        STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

and  the  principles  of  government  the  three  uni- 
versities at  which  he  was  a  student — ^those  of  St. 
Andrews,  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh — must  surrender 
claims   to    EngUsh    authorities    and   to   American 
instructors,    and    especially    to    John    Dickinson, 
formerly  a  student  at  the  Inns  of  Court,  London, 
and  one  of  the  able  thinkers  and  healthy  influences 
on   the   American   controversy.     Wilson   was   said 
to   be   the    *  best-read '    lawyer   in   the   important 
Constitutional  Convention  of  1787.     In  1789  he  was 
appointed  by  Washington  one  of  the  first  judges 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.    Next 
year  he  was  made  the  first  Professor  of  Law  at 
Philadelphia  (University  of  Pennsylvania)  ;    in  his 
introductory  lecture  he  commended  the  American 
character  in  the  few  and,  he    thought,   sufficient 
words,  that  it  was  '  eminently  distinguished  by  the 
love  of  liberty  and  the  love  of  law.'  ^7    A  man  whose 
traits  and  powers  are  thus  revealed  was  not  made 
to  be  an  extremist  on  the  issues  raised  between 
Britain  and  the  colonies,  especially  if  they  were  to 
be  expressed  in  constitutional  terms  and  prudently 
confined  within  political   bounds.     The   able    and 
bitter  satirist  for  the  Loyalists  admitted  his  learning, 
his  power  of  thought  and  his  earnestness  : 

*  Was  it  thy  fatal  faith  that  led  thee  wrong  ? 
Yet  hadst  thou  reason,  and  that  reason  strong ; 
Judgment  was  thine  and  in  no  common  share, 
That  judgment  cultur'd  with  assiduous  care.'  28 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROTTP 


49 


Wilson  had  gone  to  America,  as  a  young  man  of 
twenty-one,  in  the  year  of  the  Peace  of  Paris,  when 
hopes  for  Britain  were  high,  based  upon  great 
achievement.  Life  in  a  political  atmosphere  and 
his  own  training  and  bent  of  mind  made  him  a 
poHtical  thinker  and  a  politician.  In  a  work  2» 
published  in  1774  and  intended  to  influence  the 
deliberations  of  Congress,  although  begun  by  him 
without  that  intention,  Wilson  endeavoured  to 
establish  the  position  that  allegiance  to  the  Crown 
was  compatible  with  repudiation  of  the  legislative, 
as  well  as  the  tax-imposing,  authority  of  the  British 
Parliament  over  the  colonists.  He  argued  that, 
while  *  in  a  large  and  comprehensive  view  '  the 
interest  of  Britain  and  the  interest  of  the  colonies 
were  undoubtedly  the  same,  men  are  usually  affected 
more  by  an  inferior  interest,  if  it  is  near  to  them, 
than  by  one  that  is  superior,  if  it  is  distant ;  and  *  it 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  they  secure  the  former  by 
measures  which  wiU  forfeit  the  latter.*  Not  only 
was  it  impossible  to  guarantee  that  the  members 
of  a  ParUament  chosen  by  electors  in  Britain 
would  attend  to  the  interests  of  the  colonists  : 
they  might  even  commend  themselves  to  their  con- 
stituents by  their  ingenuity  in  inventing  schemes 
and  advocating  measures  to  serve  the  mother- 
country  immediately  at  the  expense  of  the  colonies  : 
*  to  oppress '  the  colonists  might  become  *  popular 
and  reputable  at  home.'     To  the  British  Parliament, 

D 


60       STUDIES  IN  BEITISH  HISTOEY  AND  POLITICS 

moreover,  no  obedience  was  due.    Lessons  of  loyalty 
to  ParHament  the  colonists  had  never  given  to  their 
children;    but  they  had  inculcated  the  warmest 
sentiments  of  loyalty  to  the  sovereign— to  the  British 
Crown  :   the  Crown  was  the  general  superintending 
and  safeguarding  authority  for  aU  Britons  :  '  depend- 
ence '  on  the  Crown  the  colonists  had  recognised  and 
accepted  and  wished  to  endure.     '  The  connection 
and  harmony  between  Great  Britain  and  us,  which 
it  is  her  interest  and  ours  mutuaUy  to  cultivate, 
and  on  which  her  prosperity,  as  weU  as  ours,  so 
materially  depends,  will  be  better  preserved  by  the 
operation  of  the  legal  prerogatives  of  the  Crown, 
than  by  the  exertion  of  an  unlimited  authority  by 

parUament.' 

In  a  speech  ^o  at  the  Philadelphia  Convention  in 
January  of  the  foUowing  year,  Wilson  tries  to  adhere 
to  his  main  Une  of  reasoning,  and  he  has  not  whoUy 
abandoned  his  poHtical  hopes.    But  he  is  less  dis- 
passionate than  in  his  writmg,  and  he  is  confronted 
with  the  constitutional  difficulty  of  the  position  he 
had  taken  up.    The  personal  king  in  Britain  was 
not  faithful  to  the  duty  of  the  poUtical  Crown : 
the  ministers  in  Britain  were  ministers  of  a  party 
—ministers  for  an  interest,  and  that  interest  not 
comprehensive  :    measures  of  force— unjustified  by 
right  and  unsupported  by  utiHty— had  been  sanc- 
tioned and  pressed  on  by  king  as  well  as  by  ministers. 
Both  the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  the  British  Constitu- 


AN   AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GBOUP 


51 


tion,  it  seemed  to  Wilson,  were  offended  against  by 
such  measures  as  had  been  recently  taken  in  the 
name  of  the  Crown.  The  distinction  on  which  he 
had  insisted,  as  forcibly  as  Junius^  between  Parlia- 
ment and  Crown,  and  between  ministers  and  king, 
a  distinction  '  wisely  made  by  the  constitution  for 
the  security  of  the  Crown,  could  not  be  applied, 
because  the  Crown  had  unconstitutionally  rendered 
the  application  of  it  impossible.  What  has  been  the 
consequence  ?  The  distinction  between  him  and  his 
ministers  is  lost :  but  they  have  not  been  raised  to 
his  situation  :  he  has  sunk  to  theirs.'  They  are 
firm  and  wise  words  ;  words  firmer  and  wiser  it 
would  be  hard  to  discover  in  all  the  vast  record  of 
the  American  controversy. 

At  the  decisive  Congress  of  1776  Wilson  did  not 
think  the  people  ripe  for  Independence,  and  yet, 
after  gravely  doubting,  he  voted  for  it — gave  the 
determining  vote  for  Franklin's  colony. 

Witherspoon,  of  New  Jersey,  had  no  doubts  :  the 
colonies,  he  said,  were  '  rotting '  for  want  of  Inde- 
pendence. The  sentiment,  if  not  also  its  forcible 
expression,  is  typical  of  the  man. 

John  Witherspoon  was  bom  at  the  manse  of 
Yester.  Through  his  mother  he  was  descended 
from  John  Knox.  After  his  schooldays  at  Had- 
dington he  went  to  the  University  of  Edinburgh, 
graduated  in  1739  with  Hugh  Blair,  and  studied 
for  the  Church.     Like  William  (afterwards  Principal) 


62       STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

Robertson,  he  left  his  manse  for  a  time  at  the  'Forty- 
Five,  with  martial  ardour  and  from  loyaUst  zeal,  but 
with  only  some  adventurous  consequences. 

In  the  ecclesiastical  strife  of  the  age  in  Scotland 
Witherspoon  was  perhaps  as  conspicuously  against 
Moderatism  as  Robertson  was  for  it.     In  1768— 
exactly  one  hundred  years  before  M<^Cosh  (of  Wither- 
spoon's  own  Scottish  university)— he  accepted  the 
presidency  of  the  CoUege  of  New  Jersey— Princeton  : 
Dei  sub  numine  viget.    Benjamin  Rush,  then  study- 
ing at  Edinburgh,  had  been  commissioned  to  aid 
in  overcoming  Witherspoon's  first  unwiUingness  to 
accept    the    invitation.    Since    its    dimmed    and 
troubled  rise— partly,  at  least,  in  a  log-house  about 
twenty  feet   by  twenty,  resembUng,   said  White- 
field  after  seeing  it,  the  schools  of  the  old  prophets  : 
partly  from  this  heroic  Log  CoUege  ^i  of  William 
Tennent,  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh— Prince- 
ton, throughout  its  course,  has  drawn  much  from 
Edinburgh;     and    American    Independence    owed 
much  to  the  sixth  president  of  the  college,  John 
Witherspoon.     He   readily   became    an    American. 
Without  being  a  disloyal  son  of  his  old  university, 
he  was  a  prudent,  poUtic  administrator  for  his  own 
college.    In  an  address  and  appeal  to  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Jamaica  and  the  West  India  Islands  on 
behaH  of  the  coUege,^^  he  admitted,  almost  four 
years  after  he  arrived  in  America,  that  '  any  gentle- 
man of  fortune,  who  would  give  the  last  and  highest 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


53 


polish  to  a  young  man  of  promising  parts,  would  do 
well  to  send  him,  after  his  principles  are  fixed,  and 
his  judgment  a  Httle  matured,  for  a  year  or  two, 
to  some  of  the  Universities  of  Great  Britain,'  and 

*  particularly  in  North  Britain.'  But  there  were 
reasons  why  an  American  education  should  be 
preferred.  In  *  the  young  seminaries  in  America,' 
in  general,  and  in  the  College  of  New  Jersey  not 
least,  the  value  of  diUgence  was  inculcated,  that  of 
mental  discipline  was  never  lost  sight  of,  and  the 
preservation  of  morals  was  held — even  as  by  '  all 
virtuous  and  judicious  parents  ' — a  *  point  of  the 
last  consequence.'  The  danger  run  by  young  men 
when  they  were  sent  over  to  a  British  university, 
especially  if  they  were  wealthy,  had  been  '  often 
complained  of,'  and — ^Witherspoon  himself  says — 
the  danger  really  did  exist.     For,  were  there  not, 

*  in  every  considerable  place  in  Great  Britain,  but 
especially  the  principal  cities  where  the  colleges  are 
fixed,  a  constant  succession  and  variety  of  intoxi- 
cating diversions,  such  as  baUs,  concerts,  plays, 
races,  and  others  ?  '  To  those  of  tender  years 
(Witherspoon  himself  was  fourteen  when  he  entered 
the  University  of  Edinburgh  as  a  student)  such 
diversions  were  *  highly  pernicious,'  whereas  at 
Princeton,  New  Jersey,  teachers  and  pupils  were  in  a 
small  village,  but  a  village  '  upon  the  great  post 
road,  almost  equally  distant  from  New  York  and 
Philadelphia,  so  as  to  be  a  centre  of  intelligence, 


64        STtlDIBS  m   BRITISH  mSTOEY  AND  POLITIOS 

and  have  an  easy  conveyance  of  everything  neces- 
sary, and  yet  to  be  whoUy  free  from  the  many 
temptations  in  every  great  city,  both  to  the  neglect 
of  study  and  the  practice  of  vice.'  At  the  close  of 
this  well-rendered  service  for  the  college  came  a 
Proper  Form  of  Donation  by  Will  (of  Chattels 
Personal ;   of  Real  Estates)  to  the  CoUege  of  New 

Jersey.  ,      j  •  4. 

This  was  the  man  of  whom,  when  matured  mto 

the  American  poUtician,  it  was  written  as  follows  by 

Jonathan  OdeU,  descendant  of  one  of  the  Puritan 

founders  of  Massachusetts,  graduate  of  New  Jersey 

(before  Witherspoon's  presidency),  physician  and. 

after  study  in  England,  episcopal  clergyman,  m- 

ducted   into   his   rectorship    at   Burlington,    New 

Jersey,   by  the  governor,  WiUiam  FrankUn,   the 

Oxford-trained,  Loyahst  son  of  Benjamm  Frankhn, 

as  priest  and  missionary  active  and  devoted,  a 

poUtieian  and  satirist  resolute  in  his  LoyaUsm  : 

'  Scotland  confess'd  him  sensible  and  shrewd. 
Austere  and  rigid ;  many  thought  him  good ; 
But  turbulence  of  temper  spoil'd  the  whole 
And  show'd  the  movements  of  his  inmost  soul : 
Disclos'd  machinery  loses  of  its  force ; 
He  felt  the  fact,  and  westward  bent  his  course. 

Princeton  receiv'd  him  bright  amidst  his  flaws. 
And  saw  him  labour  in  the  good  old  cause ; 
Saw  him  promote  the  meritorious  work, 
.      The  hate  of  Kings,  the  glory  of  the  Kirk. 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


66 


Known  in  the  pulpit  by  seditious  toils, 

Grown  into  consequence  by  civil  broils, 

Three  times  he  tried,  and  miserably  fail'd, 

To  overset  the  laws—the  fourth  prevail'd. 

Whether  as  tool  he  acted,  or  as  guide. 

Is  yet  in  doubt ;  his  conscience  must  decide. 

Meanwhile  unhappy  Jersey  mourns  her  thrall, 

Ordain'd  by  vilest  of  the  vile  to  fall ; 

To  fall  by  Witherspoon— O  name,  the  curse 

Of  sound  religion,  and  disgrace  of  verse. 

Member  of  Congress,  we  must  hail  him  next ; 

Come  out  of  Babylon  was  now  his  text : 

Fierce  as  the  fiercest,  foremost  of  the  first, 

He  'd  rail  at  Kings,  with  venom  well-nigh  burst. 

Not  uniformly  grand— for  some  bye-end. 

To  dirtiest  acts  of  treason  he  'd  descend  ; 

I  've  known  him  seek  the  dungeon  dark  as  night, 

Imprisoned  Tories  to  convert,  or  fright ; 

Whilst  to  myself  I  've  hummed,  in  dismal  tune, 

I  'd  rather  be  a  dog  than  Witherspoon. 

Be  patient,  reader— for  the  issue  trust ; 

His  day  will  come— remember.  Heaven  is  just.'  ^ 

At  Princeton  Witherspoon  emphasised  the  direct 
duty  of  education  to  the  State  ;  and  he  himself 
became  an  energetic  poHtician  -  ecclesiastic.  On 
the  17th  of  May  1776,  six  weeks  before  the  '  poU- 
tical  bands'  were  formally  severed,  Witherspoon 
preached  a  poHtical  sermon  at  Princeton :  »*  the 
occasion  was  '  the  General  Fast  appointed  by  the 
Congress  through  the  United  Colonies ' :  he  spoke  of 
*  the  Dominion  of  Providence  over  the  Passions  of 
Men.^    It  was  the  first  time  (he  caUed  his  hearers 


66       STtTDIBS   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

to  witness),  he  had  used  the  pulpit  directly  for  a 
political  object,  but  the  moment  had  come  when  it 
was  *not  only  lawful  but  necessary'  for  him  to 
declare  without  hesitating  that  in  his  opinion  the 
cause  of  the  colonists,  now  under  arms,  was  '  the 
cause  of  justice,  of  liberty,  and  of  human  nature.' 
It  seemed  to  him  that  the  essentials  both  of  civil 
and  of  rehgious  Uberty  were  at  stake  ;  and  they  were 
inseparable.  '  There  is  not  a  single  instance  in 
history,  in  which  civil  liberty  was  lost,  and  rehgious 
Hberty  preserved  entire.  If  therefore  we  yield  up 
our  temporal  property,  we  at  the  same  time  dehver 
the  conscience  into  bondage.'  Moreover,  '  it  would 
be  a  criminal  inattention  not  to  observe  the  singular 
interposition  of  Providence  hitherto,  in  behalf  of  the 
American  colonies.'  In  practical  ways  the  intention 
of  Providence  seemed  to  him  to  be  made  manifest, 
for  he  could  think  of  no  instance,  as  he  wrote  two 
years  later,^^  in  which  a  person  or  a  people  had  '  so 
totally  and  uniformly '  mistaken  the  means  for 
attaining  the  ends  they  sought  as  the  King  and 
ParUament  of  Britain  had  in  this  contest :  their  whole 
conduct  had  been  founded  upon  their  mistakes.  In 
a  line  of  argument  that  went  beyond  Edmund 
Burke,  who  said  of  the  colonies,  when  roused  from 
their  *  unsuspecting  confidence,'  that  they  augured 
misgovemment  at  a  distance,  Witherspoon  in  his 
sermon  in  May  1776  declared,  not  only  that  there 
were  specific  acts  of  injustice  to  be  charged  against 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


67 


the  mother-country,  but  that  so  great  was  the 
distance  between  Britain  and  the  colonies,  so  much 
time  must  elapse  before  an  error  could  be  seen  and 
remedied,  and  *  so  much  injustice  and  partiaHty 
must  be  expected  from  the  arts  and  misrepresenta- 
tion of  interested  persons,  that  for  these  colonies  to 
depend  wholly  upon  the  Legislature  of  Great  Britain, 
would  be  like  many  other  oppressive  connexions, 
injury  to  the  master  and  ruin  to  the  slave.'  He 
enforced  his  reasoning  in  a  metaphor,  only  sHghtly 
different  from  that  of  Turgot :  '  When  the  branches 
of  a  tree  grow  very  large  and  weighty,  they  fall  off 
from  the  trunk.'  *  The  sharpest  sword  will  not 
pierce  when  it  cannot  reach.  And  there  is  a  certain 
distance  from  the  seat  of  government,  where  an 
attempt  to  rule  wiU  either  produce  tyranny  and 
helpless  subjection,  or  provoke  resistance  and  effect 
a  separation.' 

Added  to  this  sermon,  when  pubHshed,  was  an 
'Address  to  the  Natives  of  Scotland  residing  in 
America. '  ^^  Wilson  and  Witherspoon  were  not  repre- 
sentative of  Scotsmen  in  America  on  this  national 
question.  Witherspoon  was  not  a  Httle  perturbed 
*to  hear  the  word  Scotch  used  as  a  term  of  reproach ' 
by  his  fellow  -  thinkers  in  the  controversy,  and  he 
resented  the  language  of  abuse  to  which  he  had 
been  subjected  by  newspapers  in  his  native  country 
for  his  advocacy  of  pohtical  objects  in  his  adopted 
home.    Accordingly,  he  endeavoured  to  convince 


H0,jtfL' 


68     STUDrES  m  British  history  and  politics 

men  of  Scottish  birth  in  America  that  Independence 
was  worthy  of  their  support,  by  showing  that  it 
was  *  necessary,'  that  it  would  be  '  honourable  and 
profitable '  to  the  colonies,  and  that  in  all  proba- 
bility it  would  be  *  no  injury,  but  a  real  advantage 
to  the  island  of  Great  Britain.'  On  the  last-men- 
tioned of  these  considerations  he  argued,  as  some 
had  already  been  arguing  in  Britain,  that  it  was 
unlikely  that  the  commercial  interests  of  the  British 
people  would  suffer  as  a  result  of  the  separation. 
*  Trade,'  he  said,  *  is  of  a  nice  and  delicate  nature  ; 
it  is  founded  upon  interest.  It  will  force  its  way 
wherever  interest  leads,  and  can  hardly  by  any  art 
be  made  to  go  in  another  direction.'  It  was  to  be 
expected,  too,  that  an  America  free  and  independent 
would  be  an  America  alert  and  enterprising,  liberal 
in  her  welcome  to  the  immigrant,  and  bent  upon 
developing  almost  boundless  resources  amid  favour- 
ing conditions  of  situation,  climate  and  soil ;  and  in 
that  development  Britain  would  probably,  next  to 
America  herself,  be  the  principal  gainer,  if  she  but 
treated  the  traders  of  America  not  worse  than  the 
traders  of  other  countries. 

In  expoimding  rules  for  public  speaking, 
Witherspoon  laid  down  that  one  of  the  qualities 
of  pulpit  eloquence  is  *  force  and  vehemence ' ; 
another,  that  the  speaker  be  *  under  the  restraint 
of  judgment  and  propriety.'^'  It  is  a  combination 
hard    to    conceive,    harder    still    to    apply.      For 


AN   AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


69 


Witherspoon  as  pulpit  orator  it  may  be  claimed, 
that  in  one  of  his  poUtical  sermons-and  that  one 
perhapshisgreatest-hegivesevidenceof  the  strength 
of  the  combination.    Even  those  (if  any)  among  his 
hearers  who  could  not  with  true  poUtical  heart  and 
mind  be  with   the   preacher   in  his  Thanksgivmg 
Sermon  after  Peace,»«  may  yet  have  admn:ed  his 
rugged  force,  if  not  absolute  sincerity,  of  mteUect, 
his  caU  to  duty  to  be  done  toward  the  new-bom 
State,  with  its  hopes  and  possibihties  and  its  trials 
still  to  be  encountered,  and  his  skiU  and  confidence 
in  presenting  the  grounds  of  a  conviction  mto  which 
by  persistence  and  from  bias,  he  had  drawn  himself 
that  in  '  particular  events  '  ''  of  great  moment,  and 
in  the  end  which  the  victors  had  set  themselves  to 
attain,  were  seen  the  influence  and  the  favour  of  the 

Providence  of  God.  ^    r  *u 

Witherspoon,  in  addition  to  being  President  of  the 
CoUege  of  New  Jersey,  was  '  obUged,'  he  tells  us, 
^  to  teach  divinity  and  moral  philosophy,  as  well 
as  chronology,  history,  and  rhetoric '-*  excessiv^ 
labours,'  he  added,  which  by  many  had  been  assigned 
as  the  cause  of  the  short  Uves  of  former  presidents, 
and  ought  to  be  an  argument  with  the  humane 
and  generous  to  induce  them  to  make  the  due  and 
intended  use  of  the  Proper  Forms  of  Donation  to 

the  CoUege  by  WUl. 

He  had  a  teacher's  influence  with  pupils  and  over 
them-in  his  case,  however,  an  influence  perhaps 


I 


60        STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


not  indefinable,  for  his  personality  was  neither 
spiritual  nor  elusive ;  and  many  were  sent  to  him 
by  reason  of  his  prepossessions  and  persuasions,  for 
these  were  known.  He  was  distinguished  as  a 
teacher.  As  president  and  as  teacher  he  was  dis- 
tinguished in  the  work  of  distinction  done  by  many 
who  had  been  pupils  under  him.  Although  during 
his  presidency  of  twenty  years  there  were  seldom 
more  than  one  hundred  students  at  the  college,  he 
had  had  as  pupils  twenty-three  representatives, 
twenty  senators,  three  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
one  vice-president,  one  president.*^  Among  his 
pupils  was  *  Light-Horse  Harry  '  Lee  (whose  cousin, 
Arthur,  Witherspoon  defended,*^  fQj.  i^jg  q}^Iq^  faith- 
ful, and  disinterested  pubHc  services,  against  the 
charges  of  Franklin).  Among  them  also  was  James 
Madison  ;  and  it  was  only  on  formal  grounds,  it 
would  seem,  that  another  Founder  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, one  bom  in  the  West  Indies  to  which  Wither- 
spoon had  appealed — Alexander  Hamilton — was  not 
gained  as  a  pupil  for  the  credit  of  Princeton. ^^ 

Li  presence  Witherspoon,  in  the  eyes  of  Americans, 
came  next  to  Washington.  Li  his  many-sided  act- 
ivity— at  a  season  when  even  a  boisterous  energy 
could  be  e£fective,  and  in  an  ecclesiastic  politi- 
cally constituted  may  be  suffered — as  orator  (who, 
Scottish-trained,  did  not  observe  Washington's 
fifteen-minute  hmit),  as  political  inspirer,  craftsman 
and  instigator  he  was  by  no  one  far  surpassed  in 


AN    OIBRICAN-INDEPENDENCE   GROUP 


61 


furthering  the  American  Revolution.  He  had  the 
Calvinist  preacher's  facihty  in  reading  and  applying 
history,  and  could  interpret  by  a  light  which  his- 
torians are  not  called  upon  to  deny,  but  which  they 
cannot  themselves  take  to  guide  as  they  review  and 
judge  even  the  greatest  of  national  events.  Through 
him,  more  than  through  any  other  of  her  sons,  the 
University  of  Edinburgh  and  American  Independ- 
ence are  connected.  Yet  there  are  those  who  believe 
that  Independence  was  bom  in  iniquity,  and  in  the 
iniquity  of  children  of  Britam  who  took  oath  lustily, 
and  themselves  beUeved,  that  only  they  were  the 
righteous. 


SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 

*  Liberty  .  .  .  must  be  limited  in  order  to  be  possessed.  The 
degree  of  restraint  it  is  impossible  in  any  case  to  settle  precisely. 
But  it  ought  to  be  the  constant  aim  of  every  wise  counsel,  to  find 
out  by  cautious  experiments,  and  rational,  cool  endeavours,  with 
how  little,  not  how  much  of  this  restraint,  the  community  can 
subsist.  For  Uberty  is  a  good  to  be  improved,  and  not  an  evil 
to  be  lessened.'— Burke,  Letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol— Works 
(1823),  iii.  189. 

*  The  rights  of  men  are  in  a  sort  of  middle,  incapable  of  definition 
but  not  impossible  to  be  discerned.  The  rights  of  men  in 
governments  are  their  advantages ;  and  these  are  often  in 
balances  between  differences  of  good  ;  in  compromises  sometimes 
between  good  and  evil,  and  sometimes  between  evil  and  evil.' 
— Burke,  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France — Works  (1823), 
V.  125. 

*The  moment  toill  is  set  above  reason  and  justice,  in  any 
community,  a  great  question  may  arise  in  sober  minds,  in  what 
part  or  portion  of  the  community  that  dangerous  dominion  of 
luill  may  be  the  least  mischievously  placed.' — Burke,  Correspond- 
ence, iii.  107. 

In  the  politics  of  which  history  tells  the  men  who 
have  to  act  are  not  concerned  with  counsels  of  per- 
fection, but  with  rational  plans  of  expediency — with 

62 


SOME  MABKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTOEY 


63 


practicable  schemes  for  the  conduct  of  affairs  of 
State  :  they  are  only  seldom  confronted  with  dogma 
or  embarrassed  by  an  abundance  of  poHtical  theory 
and  ethical  creed. 

The  difficulty  and  the  value  of  the  study  of  history, 
in  its  higher  ranges  and  fruitful  interpretation,  are 
contained  in  discovering  and  examining  conditions, 
in  appreciating  motives  and  interests,  in  observing 
the  clash  of  opinions,  in  perceiving  and  estimating 
how  means,  usually  imperfect,  have  been  or  might 
have    been  fitted    to  an  immediate,   reaUsable  or 
desired  end.     Were  men  universally  and  abidingly 
prudent,  the  value  of  history  would  be  lessened, 
but  it  would  be  at  once  calculable  from  a  straight 
and  simple  view  of  the  past  in  its  congruous  ele- 
ments :    there  would  be  an  intelligible  and  con- 
venient Art  of  Politics  :    it  would  be  possible  and 
pohtically  profitable  to  compile  manuals  of  state- 
craft.    But  in  pontics — the  politics  disclosed  by 
history — ^we  neither  find  nor  look  mainly  for  uni- 
formity or  harmony.     Instead,  we  detect  different 
kinds,  as  well  as  different  degrees,  of  discord — dis- 
cord in  thought,  as  in  opposing  schools,  systems 
and  mere  tendencies  of  thought ;   rivalry  in  action, 
as  in  contending  poHcies  and  in  breaches  of  continu- 
ity in  the  poHcy  of  a  statesman  or  of  his  associates, 
disciples  and  party  ;   and  the  inconsistency  or  dis- 
cord of  thought  with  action,  as  between  the  dominant 
or  characteristic  thought  or  mental  note  of  an  age 


64        STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

and  the  prevailing  and  enforced  action,  or  some 
striking  abstinence  from  action,  on  the  part  of  those 
who  direct  the  State  for  the  nation.  Of  these  three 
types,  the  first  belongs  distinctively  to  the  realm  of 
mind— to  Hterature,  if,  indeed,  we  should  and  may 
dissociate  Hterature,  with  security  and  advantage 
to  itself,  from  mmd-in-action,  from  man's  mind  as 
it  reveals  itself  in  effort  and  in  effects,  in  any  age. 
The  second  pertains  to  the  region  of  history,  as 
history  is  narrowly  and  too  often  conceived— to 
history  as  the  chronicle  and  record  of  mere  '  events  ' 
and  mere  externals  in  the  life  of  the  past,  with  that 
which  is  really  vital,  even  for  the  understanding  of 
the  '  event,'  sacrificed  or  imperiUed  by  the  dispro- 
portioned  and  indiscriminate  prominence  assigned 
to  what  is  on  the  surface  of  life.  The  third  type— 
the  antagonism  between  thought  and  action— pro- 
vides the  critical  problems  of  history,  for  it  discloses 
divergence  between  mind  and  the  work  of  mind, 
between  what  is  thought  and  what  is  done  or  was 
intended  to  be  done. 

This  divergence,  whenever  found,  is  to  be  observed, 
and  its  causes  are  to  be  analysed  ;  especially,  per- 
haps, in  the  history  of  modem  Britain,  just  because 
Britain  has  been  more  successful  in  pohcy  than  it 
has  been  attached  to,  or  even  been  conscious  of, 
pohtical  idea,  and  has  rather  appHed  thought,  or 
has  systematised  thoughts,  after  action  in  a  review 
and  estimate  of  effects  than  used  thought  dehberately 


SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


65 


before  action  as  a  logical  groundwork,  reasoned 
method,  and  well-equipped  instrument.  Hap- 
hazardly prudent,  if  not  habitually.  Englishmen 
have  been  thoughtful  and  wise,  in  general,  only 
after  the  event — after  success  and,  notably,  after 
failure,  with  its  lessons. 

What  is  the  idea  *  England '  after  an  England 
found  herseK — came  to  know  herself  and  to  make 
efforts  to  be  true  to  herself  ?  Whether  we  think 
of  England  as  she  has  appeared  to,  or  been  revealed 
in,  the  mind  of  Shakespeare  and  Bacon,  Hooker  and 
his  intellectual  kinsman,  Burke,  Milton,  Words- 
worth and  Tennyson,  or  think  of  her  as  she  has 
been  regarded  and  moulded  by  her  great  statesmen 
and  men  of  action — by  leaders  and  mainstays  like 
Burleigh,  Cromwell  and  the  second  Pitt — we  reach 
one  and  a  not  indistinct  estimate.  It  is  that  of  a 
nation  jealous  of  its  liberties,  and  in  that  sense 
liberty -loving,  yet  not  insensible  of  the  stem  need  of 
order  and  discipline,  lajring  stress  on  interests  more 
than  on  principles,  on  advantages  more  than  on 
rights,  and  directed  by  men  who  have  been  gifted 
with  insight  and  caution  more  than  with  foresight 
and  brilliance,  who  have  lived  for  the  future  inas- 
much as  they  have  tried  to  see  and  to  do  the  duty  of 
the  present.  If,  again,  we  view  Britain,  with  her 
equipment  and  responsibilities,  as  she  has  been 
adjudged  by  the  comprehensive  intellect  of  a 
Montesquieu  or  the  political  and  expedient  sense  of 

£ 


66       STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

a  Friedrich  von  Gentz,  or  even,  in  spite  of  prejudice 
and    perversion,    by    the    average,    weU-informed, 
continental  mind  of  Europe  during  times  of  crisis 
for  Britain  as  in  1800  and  in  1900,  we  reach  by  a 
more  circuitous  and  less   sure  path   a  somewhat 
similar    result— that    England    and    Britain    have 
prospered  through  regard  for  law  and  for  liberty, 
for  burden  as  weU  as  privilege,  for  duties  accepted 
and  enforced  and  not  merely  for  rights  easily  pro- 
claimed, and  that  to  the  British  genius  and  type  of 
mind,  undoubtedly  composite  but  with  constituents 
that  prevail,  we  must  ascribe  distrust  of  mere  theory, 
incapacity  to  foUow  theory  through,  and  disinclina- 
tion to  submit  or  be  subjected  to  it ;    that  to  it 
belong  sagacity  and  balance,  as  of  the  Roman,  not 
the  alertness  of  the  Athenian,  a  certain  narrowness 
of  vision  when  more  than  the  immediate  issue  is  in 
question,  but  a  sureness  of  foot  for  the  day,  a  liking 
for  precedent  and  attachment  to  the  real  and  the 
feasible,  readiness  to  make  surrenders  by  way  of 
compromise  for  convenience,  for  peace  of  mind  and 
the  satisfying,  unideal  conduct  of  everyday  voca- 
tions.     Of  England  or  of  Britain  it  cannot  be  said 
that,  bom  to  be  a  nation  and  a  State,  it  ever  was  or 
has  become  either  merely  an  industrial  organisation 
and  a  commercial  machine,  or,  in  violent  antipathy, 
a  perilous  association  of  dreamers  and  theorists, 
pure   thinkers   and   well-intentioned    philosophers. 
In  England  there  has  been  less  wisdom  than  in 


SOME   MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


67 


ancient  Athens ;   there  has  been  as  much  sagacity 
as  even  at  ancient  Rome. 

The  mind  of  the  historical  inquirer  and  political 
critic  is  at  once,  or  by  easy  transition,  discreetly 
sympathetic  and  relentlessly  severe.  Justice — 
historic  justice — ^is  the  high  end  of  the  historian's 
task ;  and  with  his  knowledge  of  men,  times  and 
conditions,  he  recognises  that  for  historical  judgment 
there  can  be  few  standards  fixed  and  absolute.  In 
history  and  in  poHtics  no  rule  or  injunction  should 
be  more  insistent,  and  none  is  more  equitable,  and 
none  in  many  cases  more  difficult  equitably  to  apply, 
than  that  of  relativity  :  it  moulds  the  aspirations 
and  achievements  of  prudent  men,  and  it  should 
direct  in  the  judgments  that  others  pass  in  wisdom 
upon  them. 

Englishmen  who  know  and  feel  the  history  of 
England  are  impelled,  like  Burke,  almost  to  con- 
secrate the  State,  and  such  will  construct  a  national 
Bible  from  the  record  of  the  nation's  life  and  its 
appreciative  interpretation  :  others  inherit  or  mys- 
teriously acquire  the  poUtical  aptitude  proper  to 
Englishmen  :  others  still — the  many — ^never  enter 
into  the  heritage  nor  acquire  possession. 

The  test  of  national  character,  as  of  individual, 
is  in  its  trend.  To  pursue  and  to  determine  the 
trend  of  EngUsh  poUtics  would  be  a  lengthy,  and  at 
times  an  elusive  quest ;  but,  at  least,  we  can  pursue 


«.!       STODIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTOEy  AND  POLITICS 

at  closer  quarters  than  hitherto,  and  we  may  thus 
see  some  definite  reason  for  what  may  appear  to  have 
been  laid  down  on  somewhat  arbitrary  assumption. 

Although  we  must  look  with  question  and  suspicion 
on  pictures  of  primitive  democracy,  the  primary 
principles  or  dispositions  underlying  English  pohtical 
Ufe,  in  the  earUest  age  of  the  authenticated  history 
of  the  English  race,  were  strongly,  if  not  predomi- 
nantly, those   of   liberty.    The   dispositions   were 
rudimentary,  befitting  primitive  social  relations  and 
pohtical  needs.    They  were  also  expansive,  partly 
because  they  were  not  fully  secured,  partly  because, 
in  spite  of  formaUsm,  they  were  not  so  rigidly 
confined   in  precise  formulae  and  fast-fixed   pro- 
visions as  not  to  be  capable  of  responding  to  interests 
themselves  changing  and  developing.     The  tradition 
of  Uberty  came  to  be  in  excess  of  what  the  reaUty 
had  been  ;  but  in  political  hfe  a  nation's  mere  idea 
of  what  has  been— a  view  held  by  itself,  or  by  an 
affected  or  assertive  part,  of  what  it  is  entitled  to— 
is  as  important  as  the  working  of  reahties,  until 
these  two— idea  and   reaUty— clash  and  struggle 
for  mastery.    In  these  facts  is  contained  a  broad 
and  lasting  significance.     Reduced  to  one  formula, 
the  problem  of  politics  is  to  harmonise  authority 
and  Uberty— iwipcrwm  et  Kfeerto- those  '  miserable 
opposites,'  Clarendon,  herein  hardly  a  representa- 
tive EngUshman,  termed   them   in  circumstances 


SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


69 


'. 


that  condone  his  despairing  estimate  and  evoked 
the  political  pessimism  and  unconstitutionalism  of 
Hobbes.  In  the  effort  towards  adjustment  between 
authority  and  liberty — the  former  an  essential 
attribute  of  the  State  ;  the  latter,  of  the  nation,  or 
of  elements  in  the  nation — authority  has  been,  and 
has  had  to  be,  the  aggressor  :  Uberty  has  had  to  be 
saved  from  its  own  extreme,  its  own  excess  :  it  has 
often  repelled  the  claims  and  advances  of  authority, 
and  yet  only  by  association  and  partnership  with 
authority  could  Uberty  itself  be  strengthened  and 
endure.  Without  this  poUtical  formula  before  us  we 
miss  the  bearings  of  the  great  epochal  events,  the 
transitions  and  the  crises  of  EngUsh  history.  The 
Norman  Conquest,  with  its  problem  of  the  extent  to 
which  EngUsh  and  Norman  contributed  in  aptitude 
and  in  institutions  to  the  resultant  in  the  England 
of  the  days  of  the  Great  Charter  ;  the  administrative 
system,  non-parUamentary  and  parUamentary,  of 
the  Plantagenets,  with  the  meaning  and  force  of 
administrative  authority  indubitably  disclosed  by 
the  first  and  by  the  greatest  of  the  Plantagenets  and 
through  their  agents  and  agencies ;  the  Tudor  re- 
gime, with  its  absolutism,  enUghtened  and  remedial, 
and  yet  for  a  succeeding  age  and  other  conditions 
perilous ;  the  struggle  between  Monarchy  and 
ParUament,  between  an  independent  or  partly 
irresponsible  executive  and  an  aspiring,  aggressive 
legislature  imder  the  Stewarts ;    the  character  of 


70       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

the  Revolution  as  both  a  subversion  and  a  settle- 
ment :  all  in  poUtical  analysis  must  be  tested  by  the 
fundamental  formula  which  runs  through  poUtical 

history. 

The  existence  of  an  early,  rudimentary  basis  in 
liberty  and  the  persistent  attachment  to  it  explain, 
further,  why  the  pohcy  of  authority,  at  times  heaUng 
and  essential,  has  usuaUy  been  resisted  as  a  breach 
with  the  past— an  encroachment  on  rights.    When 
a  nation  or  a  large  body  of  a  people  feels,  or  even 
merely  deludes  itself  into  the  feeling,  that  it  is  being 
wronged,   it  is   in   a   dangerous   mood— the   more 
dangerous  in  proportion  to  its  poUtical  training  and 
cohesion.    It  then  demands  respect  and  considerate 
treatment ;  and  of  EngUshmen,  not  alert,  inquiring 
and  transcendent  in  mind,  but  practical,  staid  and 
even  somewhat  sluggish  (it  is  of  the  many,  and  of 
average  and  type  we  speak),  it  is  true  that  they  have 
their  inteUectual,  moral  and  poUtical  seizures,  which 
caU  for  sympathetic  and  discreet  treatment,  just 
because  the  outbursts,  though  issuing  from  conditions 
historicaUy  discernible,  with  initial  symptoms  in  a 
past  not  near,  are  not  regular  nor  periodical,  cannot 
with  any  certainty  be  provided  against,  and  are  with 
difficulty,  if  at  aU,  to  be  met  by  temporary  and 
partial   expedients.     The   disposition   which   waits 
before  asserting  itself,  until  there  is  an  accumulation 
of  grievances,  or  until  a  wrong  or  an  obstacle  has 
become  flagrant,   may  not  practise  self-denial  in 


SOME  MARKS  Ot  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


71 


waiting  and  working  for  the  remedy  :    it  is  a  dis- 
position, however,  to  be  reckoned  with,  especiaUy  at 
such  time  of  awakened  consciousness  and  probably 
precipitate  zeal.    The  temper  of  Puritan  England, 
the  means  by  which  that  temper  was  embittered,  and 
the  manner  and  degree  in  which  it  failed,  or  feU  short 
of  its  own  inner  worth  and  ideal,  reflect  and  iUustrate 
this  disposition.    In  different  moods  it  is  reflected 
also  by  the  provisional  character  of  the  Restoration 
and  the  reasons  for  its  poUtical  inadequacy,  and 
for  the  tolerance  extended  to  it ;  it  is  reflected  by 
the  more  practical  and  effective  character  of  the 
Revolution,  with  its  binding  chain  of  causes  and 
effects,  and,  at  least  negatively,  it  is  reflected  by  the 
detached  attitude  of  the  EngUsh  mind  and  the  self- 
sufficiency  of  the  EngUsh  constitution,  though  in 
proved  need  of  reform,  amid  the  subversive  poUtics 
of  the  French  Revolution. 

Such  facts  and  considerations  as  have  been  urged 
explain  the  persistent  appeal  to  precedent  made  by 
the  EngUsh  m  then-  poUtical  Ufe— their  appeal  to 
and  veneration  for  that  old  EngUsh  law— those 
customs  and  rights— traditionaUy  known  as  the  Law 
of  Edward  the  Confessor,  for  the  Great  Charter,  and 
those  other  compacts  between  king  and  nation,  or  a 
community,  which  give  effect  to  principles,  embody 
rights,  assert  Uberties— not  a  general  Uberty— and 
fix  bounds  to  authority  or,  rather,  to  specific  claims 
of  authority.     This  appeal  to  precedent  we  owe,  in 


72       STTJDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

part,  to  the  rule  and  working  of  mere  customary 
observance  which  is  the  aU-prevailing  mark  of 
primitive  societies— that  without  which  law  itself, 
for  them,  and  the  law-abiding  spirit  cannot  be  ;  but 
we  owe  it  also  to  this  vital  mark  supplemented  and 
corrected,  for  without  supplement  and  correction 
customary  observance  results  in  political  stagnation 
and  the  absence  of  the  higher  poHtical  virtues  of  a 
people.  We  owe  it  to  a  love  for  the  past,  to  con- 
fidence in  the  past,  and  to  a  desire  for  continuity— 
a  desire  never  quite  rationally  based  but  springing 
for  many  from  contentment  with  one's  physical 
lot  in  life  and  the  gifts  of  Nature,  or  a  mere 
acquiescence  in  it,  whether  it  be  from  timidity  or 
from  a  prudent  dread  of  worse.  We  owe  it  to 
political  thrift— to  disregard  for  new  methods  and 
instruments  as  long  as  the  old  and  familiar  retam 
some  utihty  and  m  skilful  and  trusted  hands  can  be 
shown  to  possess  some  flexibility  of  adaptation. 
Mainly  by  this  instinct,  practical  but  with  evident 
limitations,  is  constituted  the  genius  of  the  English 

in  pontics. 

This  appeal  to  precedent  and  the  regard  for  ex- 
pediency, which  is  the  offspring,  and  usually  acts 
as  the  support,  of  the  appeal,  have  not  in  the  his- 
tory of  England  been  stagnant  forces,  agencies  of 
a  cramped  conservatism.  Why  1  Chiefly  because, 
in  the  view  especially  of  succeeding  generations, 
there  were  foundations  in  rights  and  liberties,  and 


SOME  MARKS  OF   ENGLISH  HISTORY 


73 


because  the  fresh  application  of  old  principles  and 
rights  amid  new  and  wider  social  conditions,  with 
relations  of  life  and  citizenship  and  the  mind  of 
man  expanded,  brought  with  it  a  new  and  wider 
interpretation,  a  more  generous,  though  perhaps  a 
more  dangerous,  reference  of  the  old  principles.     In 
precedent,  definition  and  adaptation  is  summed  up 
much  of  the  critical  and  creative  politics  of  England  : 
initiative  and  innovation  England  has  long  known 
and  practised,  of  the  kind  that  calculates  and  counts 
steps  ;   but  the  initiative  and  innovation  of  daring 
—of  such  as  dare  that  they  may  more  greatly  do- 
while  it  has  been  fruitful  in  foreign  enterprise  to 
Britain,  and  was  poUticaUy  favoured  by  many  men 
of  high  courage  and  hope  in  the  struggle  for  Parlia- 
ment and  Puritan,  has  had  a  relatively  smaU  part 
in  forming  the  State  and  shaping  its  administration. 
The  pontics  of  Britain— the  poUtical  system  and  the 
political  life  of  Britain— we  can  understand  and 
explain   only  by   Britain  itself.     The  test  of  the 
constitution  is  not  in  absolute  theories  of  poHtics, 
but  is  found  in  Britain,  in  the  England  of  each  age, 
in  the  habits  of  life  of  Enghshmen- then-  disposition, 
their  strength  and  failings— in  the  manner  and  the 
degree  of  the  response  of  the  constitutional  system 
to  changing  economic  and  social  conditions,  and  to 
the   poUtical   aspirations  and   endowment   of   the 
people,  in  provision  by  letter  for  an  advance  in 
spirit,  in  the  measure  of  security  to  which,  as  under 


74       STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

an  unwritten,  flexible  constitution,  trusting  in  con- 
ventions and  poUtical  moraUty,  the  spirit  can  Uve 
of  itself  and  be  beneficent. 

From  what  has  been  said,  and  from  ordinary 
knowledge    and    appreciation    of    the    history    of 
Britain,  it  wiU  at  once  appear  that  there  are  two 
schools  of   thought  in  Enghsh  poUtics,   and,  less 
pardonably,  even  among  the  historians  of  England  ; 
and  that  the  truth  is  with  neither  of  them.     There 
is  the   school  whose   watchword  is   freedom,   im- 
properly conceived ;  there  is  the  school  whose  cri- 
terion, in  contrast  rather  than  in  complement,  is 
authority,  improperly  apphed.    The  former  school 
presents  what  it  would  itself  deem  the  sympathetic 
view  of  development  in  EngUsh  poUtics  and  of  the 
growth  of  Britain:    on  a  favourable  criticism  it 
would  be  termed  the  ideal  view  ;  on  a  severe  criti- 
cism, the  sentimental  and  slender  view.     It  abounds 
in  appeals  to  '  national '  freedom  and  assertions  of 
'  national '  pohcy  :  it  makes  and  it  argues  from  the 
assumption  that  whatever  is  parhamentary  is  '  con- 
stitutional '—that  parUamentary  progress  and  con- 
stitutional progress  are  one  :    it  looks  to  popular 
rights    and    Hberties,    and    somewhat    disregards, 
because  it  does  not  adequately  understand,  needs 
of  State.    For  example,  it  points  with  substantiaUy 
unqualified  approval  to  the  action  of  Simon  de 
Montfort,  and  readily  accords  to  him  the  role  of  a 
national  hero,  but  it  ignores  the  partly  expedient, 


SOME  MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


75 


if  not  sectional,  if  not  personal,  ends  he  had  in  view. 
It  finds  in  Edward  i.  a  national  king  of  England 
with  aims  purely  national,  but,  untrue  to  historical 
perspective,  false  to  that  higher  estimate  of  con- 
ditions, purpose  and  achievement  in  which,  more 
than  in  accuracy  of  single  and  disconnected  facts, 
the  truth  of  history  consists,  it  depreciates  the  hard 
reaUty  and  the  stem  need  of  organisation  of  govem- 
ment--that  equipment  of  the  machine  of  State,  in 
its  supervisory  and  coercive  capacities,  which,  for 
Edward  i.  and  for  statesmanship  in  the  circumstances 
of  his  age,  was  prudent  and  necessary.     Similarly, 
it  bestows  a  lax  approval,  generous  but  not  just, 
on  the  growth  and  recognition  of  ParUament  under 
the  house  of  Lancaster,  although  that  growth  took 
place  at  the  cost  of  efficiency  in  administration,  was 
out  of  harmony  with  prevaiHng  social  interests  in 
England  and  the  necessities  of  government  due  to 
the  dispositions  of  great  famiUes,  and  led,  in  short, 
to  want  of  governance.     Tudor  rule  it  condemns  as 
an  invasion  of  '  constitutional '  Hberties  :    it  mini- 
mises the  virtue  of  the  efforts  made  under  the  Tudors 
and  concihar  government  towards  an  ampler,  more 
expeditious,  and  more  efficient  executive.    In  the 
Stewart  struggles  it  arrogates  to  the  parUament- 
arians    the    title    of    *  constitutionaUsts.'     In    the 
Commonwealth  it  sometimes  flounders.    CromweU's 
troubles  are  to  it  a  heritage  of  trouble  :  there  must 
be  sovereignty  as  well  as  rights  and  Uberty.    It 


76       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

glories  in  the  Revolution :  with  Burke  it  may 
justifiably  assert  that  '  the  nation,  in  that  act,  was 
on  the  defensive  '  ;  but  it  does  not  allow  sufficiently 
for  the  character  of  the  prime  movers,  and,  through 
not  distinguishing  between  Whiggism  and  Whig 
endeavour  and  practice,  it  unjustifiably  describes  as 
parhamentary,  national  and  popular  a  government 
or  a  framework  of  government  that  was,  and  partly 
from  its  origins  in  the  E-evolution  came  still  more 
to  be,  oHgarchic — a  government  by  *  connexions,' 
in  invidious  interpretation.  In  the  nineteenth 
century  this  school,  temper  or  poUcy  found  its  task 
and  its  privileged  position  in  the  championing  of 
the  cause  of  parhamentary  reform,  with  a  view 
especially  to  a  wider  recognition  of  citizen  capacity 
as  recognised  at  law  in  voting  rights  to  be  entrusted 
to  larger  masses  of  the  people.  With  this  achieved 
— with  the  working  and  the  power  of  a  majority 
system  fixed  in  a  constitutional,  but  not  regularly 
limited,  democracy — its  continuous,  constitutional 
function  has  in  large  measure  gone  :  the  problem 
of  its  attitude  to  industrial  and  practical  poHtics 
remains,  amid  govemmentally  popular  conditions 
and  imperfect  constitutional  safeguards,  for  both 
of  which  it  is  mainly  responsible,  or  against  which, 
faithfully  to  itself,  it  could  not  protest. 

Typical  leaders  of  this  school  of  thought  in  Eng- 
land are  Sir  John  Fortescue  (in  part),  the  Puritan 
writers,  Locke,  Bentham,  and,  though  with  much 


SOME   MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY  77 

of  the  falsehood  of  extremes,  the  author  of  PolUical 
Justice,  William  Godwin.    Its  poHtical  heroes  are 
the  Hampdens  and  Pyms  of  history.    Burke,  as 
thinker  and  poUtician,  divides  his  aUegiance.    Pitt 
the  younger  the  school  cuts  in  two  and  claims  the 
safer  half.     In  its  survey  of  the  history  of  England 
and  of  modem  Britam  it  lays  more  stress  on  forms 
than  on  substance,  more  on  '  rights '  than  on  com- 
forts, more  on  the  manner  of  rule  than  on  the 
persistent  and  hard  conditions  of  the  life  of  men  in 
society  that  test  the  reaUty  of  statesmanship,  and 
demand   capacity  for   seeing  clearly  and  judging 
soundly  and  courage  to  act— with  severity,  it  may 
be,  in  order  to  save.     It  makes  too  Uttle  of  prudence 
— *in  aU  things  a  virtue,  in  poUtics  the  first  of 

virtues.'  ^ 

The  sympathetic,  idealistic  or  merely  sentimental 
reading  of  English  history  can  be  easily  consistent, 
and  it  simplifies  the  task  of  the  historian  who  is 
captivated  by  it :  by  it  a  line  can  be  pursued,  for  it 
can  emphasise  the  broad  foundations  of  EngUsh 
Uberty,  the  attachment  of  EngUshmen  to  their  safe- 
guards from  the  past,  the  cry  not  for  fresh  privileges 
but  for  old  rights— the  continuity  of  EngUsh  insti- 
tutions along  the  line  of  freedom  protected  by  pre- 
cedent. But  in  spite  of  its  deference  to  precedent  it 
is  an  estimate  unhistorical,  because  not  poHtical.  It 
is  partial,  not  just.  It  ignores,  or  gives  Uttle  coun- 
tenance to,  half  of  poUtics  :  it  does  not  see  poUtics 


78       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

whole :  it  is  blind  to,  or  looks  askance  at,  authority  : 
its  liberty  is  not  a  liberty  politically  secured  ;  for 
even  in  the  history  of  England,  with  an  approach  to 
continuity  unexcelled  in  the  growth  of  its  institu- 
tions, there  are  times  when  the  pressing  problem 
for  statesmen  was  how  to  limit  freedom  in  order  to 
save  it. 

In  history  we  may,  and  must  often,  illustrate 
merely,  when  we  can  not  or  will  not  prove  :  we  adopt 
a  device  of  convenience  or  of  despair.  If  we  may 
not  estabhsh,  by  continuous  narrative  and  a  com- 
prehensive retrospect,  let  us  exempHfy  the  devotion 
of  the  English  to  precedent,  their  practical  instinct 
in  poUtics,  their  contribution  and  loyalty  to  a 
democracy  that  does  not  dissolve  the  State  and  does 
not  destroy  the  nation  through  loss  of  imity  and 
identity.  But  we  illustrate  only  after  precaution 
and  with  a  proviso.  There  has  not  always  been  a 
happy  correspondence,  not  invariably  a  fruitful 
aUiance,  between  domiuant  or  typical  thought  and 
enforced  action  even  in  the  history  of  England.  In 
such  divergence  and  conflict  that  which  is  enforced 
needs  the  clearer  testimony  and  expUcation  in  its 
behalf.  In  pursuing  and  recording  the  course  of 
change  we  are  apt  too  much  to  ignore  protests  for 
the  old,  the  opposition,  the  drag  in  history  :  we 
judge  by  external  success,  by  what  prevails.  Strik- 
ing innovations  and  many  great  triumphs  have 


SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


79 


proceeded  from  minorities  :   such  may  even  be  due 
to  one  unsettling,  suggestive  and  fertile  idea  of  one 
brain.     But  may  not  great  things  also  be  left  behind, 
abandoned  with  the  minority,  with  that  remnant 
which  though  vanquished  may,  notwithstanding,  be 
virtuous  ?     There  is  not  always  incorporation  or 
assimilation  of  all  that  is  good  in  the  old  when  the 
old  is  transformed.     The  protesters  against  the  old, 
to  whom  the  measure  of  progress  is  ascribed,  have 
need,  especiaUy  in  time  of  sudden  triumph,  as  much 
of  historical  sympathy  and  political  caution  as  of 
fertility  of  poUtical  idea.     In  such  case  only  the  rule 
and  method  of  averages  and  of  probabilities  can  be 
applied  in  poHtics  and  in  historical  estimate  :  we 
merely  approximate  in  idea  to  the  truth,  and  in 
action  we  merely  approximate  to  success. 

The  record  of  British  statesmanship  shows  that 
the  great  epochs  of  the  history  of  Britain,  poHticaUy 
viewed,  are  in  kind  mainly  two :  either  they  are  those 
in  which  Hberty  and  authority  have  been  in  healthy 
association,  or  in  a  simply  unsuspecting  confidence, 
through  a  community  of  wills  or  a  temporarily  happy 
surrender  of  the  wills  of  individuals  and  ranks  of 
men  to  the  State  and  statesmen  ;   or,  less  normally 
but  even  more  influentially  for  the  future,  they 
are  those  in  which,  under  prudent,  though  it  may  be 
unpopular   statesmanship,   a  deUberate  effort  has 
been  made  to  adjust  the  balance  between  liberty 


80        STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

and  authority  with  a  view  to  healing  and  strengthen- 
ing the  State  in  the  interest  of  the  nation.     Few  of 
the  statesmen  of  Britain  have  set  out  on  their  course 
with  a  programme  and  adhered  to  it ;   but  whether 
from  conviction  and  from  consistency,  or  merely 
from  the  pressure  of  necessities  and  after  experiment 
and  hard  experience,  the  makers  of  England  and  of 
the  Empire  of  Britain  have  recognised  the  mutual 
dependence  of  liberty  and  authority,  the  play  of 
parts  in  the  constitution,  the  need  for  a  fitting  of 
parts.    PoUticians    when    in    power    realise    what 
writers  are  thinking  when  they  say  that  a  constitu- 
tion is  the  maimer  of  life  of  the  State  or  of  the  nation 
in  its  pohtical  activity,  that  a  constitution  provides, 
or  should  not  hamper,  means  for  that  activity,  that 
it  may  fix  limits  to  purposes  and  plans  of  one  kind, 
and  leave  men  free  for  purposes  and  plans  of  other 
kinds.     The  responsibility  of  State  office  for  but  a 
short  time  is  necessary  to  enforce  the  principle  that 
an  official  act  is  an  act  of  State,  that  the  representa- 
tive spokesmen  of  a  party  when  called  to  office 
throw    off — should    throw    off — their    irresponsible 
party  character,  being  in  responsible  power  with 
command  of  the  equipments  and  strength  of  the 
State  for  the  well-being  of  the  community  as  a 
whole.     That  sovereignty  is  a  relationship,  involv- 
ing both  rights  and  obligations  for  both  sovereign 
and  subject,  is  at  the  foundation  of  all  pofitics  and 
pervades  all  the  economy  of  the  State. 


SOME   MARKS   OP   ENGLISH  HISTORY 


81 


William  i. — Conqueror  and  with  his  policy  con- 
ditioned by  the  fact  and  the  nature  of  the  Conquest, 
Norman  and  never  divesting  himself  of  the  Norman 
character  and  genius,  but  also  English  and  in  effect 
national  because  at  once  broad  and  steady  in  his 
view  of  administration — is  great  as  ruler  because 
his  measures  help  to  promote  the  growth  of  a 
new  composite  nation  by  helping  to  weld  the  com- 
posite elements  of  the  State.  Edward  i.  is  by  many 
revered  for  a  parHamentary,  constitutionalist  de- 
sign :  with  more  acumen  and  sounder  historical 
judgment  he  is  deemed  a  keen-sighted,  calculating 
and  capable  organiser  of  executive  and  administra- 
tive power.  Henry  vii.,  in  possession  of  State 
authority  and  using  it  discreetly  and  with  fuU 
purpose  after  the  upheaval  in  government  and 
throughout  the  nation  before  and  during  the  Wars 
of  the  Roses,  consolidates  the  strength  of  the  Crown 
as  the  mainstay  and  security  of  all  law  and  all 
poHcy,  but  this  he  cannot  do  without  reference  to  the 
nation  and  dependence  upon  it ;  and  the  rule,  thus 
directed  by  its  founder — a  rule  both  repressive  and 
remedial — continued  to  be  substantially,  though  not 
in  due  forms,  national  in  many  of  its  manifestations 
under  the  second  and  the  last  of  an  able  dynasty. 

The  political  task  for  the  Stewarts  and  for  men 
politically  interested  at  the  time  was  how  to  utilise 
in  a  harmony  the  expressive  function  of  Parliament 
and  the  governing  force  of  the  executive  :   none  at 

F 


82       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

the   outset   saw  that   more   clearly   than   Francis 
Bacon,  and  no  one  was  more  insistent  on  the  need 
and  value  of  understanding  between  the  two  powers 
in  the  State.     But  poHcy  was  akeady  in  dispute, 
not  merely  formal  poUtics  ;    in  particular,  ecclesi- 
astical   principles    and    prejudices    intensely    held 
made  men  divide  poUticaUy  and  inquire  into  and 
take   their   stand   upon   constitutional   principles, 
without  the  aid  and  enforcement  of  which  the  ecclesi- 
astical principles  themselves  could  not  be  aided  and 
enforced.    Therefore,  the  fundamentals  of  the  State 
in  England  were  examined  and  disturbed  in  Puritan 
experimental  politics— were  partly  abandoned  and 
could  never  be  wholly  recovered,  since  men  had  in 
reason  as  well  as  in  fact  outHved  the  conditions  of 
expediency  to  which  they  owed  in  part  their  origin 
and  by  which  they  had  been  supported.     Cromwell, 
personal  and  nominal  exponent  of  a  Commonwealth, 
is  a  poHtical  paradox,  not  mconsistently  with  the 
times  by  which  he  was  tested:    nurtured  on  the 
principles  of  Hampden  and  Pym,  he  is  impelled  to 
deeds  and  methods  like  those  of  Strafiord  ;   by  the 
same  minds  he  is  admired  and  is  denounced,  for  the 
Protector  of  an  England  torn  with  dissensions,  in 
need  of  consistency  (were  it  possible)  in  policy  if 
there  were  to  be  a  settlement,  realised,  almost  in  a 
poUtical  irony  or  nemesis,  that  there  are  demands 
of  rule  as  well  as  of  citizenship,  that  a  constitution 
exists  for  mediation,   and   that   government  is  a 


SOME   MARKS   OF   ENGLISH  HISTORY 


83 


compromise  and  depends  upon  concessions,  for- 
bearance and  goodwill.  Without  such  understand- 
ing, appeahng  to  practical  men  and  appHed  and 
shaped  afresh  by  them,  there  could  have  been  no 
party  system  (instead  of  mere  uncontrolled  party 
rivalries),  no  development  of  ministry  and  cabinet, 
in  Britain. 

Thus,  also,  the  second  Pitt  in  his  constructive 
statesmanship  before  the  French  Revolution  seeks 
at  once  to  organise  and  make  harmonious  the 
machinery  of  the  State,  and  to  work  upon  and  to 
expand  the  basis  of  the  nation  and  of  a  new  society, 
entitled  to  political  recognition,  in  Britain  ;  and, 
while  in  his  later  schemes  of  State  he  departed  in 
outward  effort  from  the  spirit  of  his  earlier  reforms 
and  positive  endeavours,  this  and  not  more  can 
be  charged  historically  against  him,  that  he  mis- 
conceived, though  less  obliquely  than  Burke,  the 
immediate  and  impending  evils  for  his  own  country 
from  a  political  cataclysm  in  France  :  he  shrank, 
but  over-cautiously  shrank,  from  applying  and  per- 
sisting in  a  policy  which  in  happier  days  had  been 
held  by  him  to  be  safe  and  statesmanlike,  and  had 
been  made  by  him  his  own,  but  which  amid  the  new 
conditions  was  dreaded  by  him  as  inexpedient,  as 
possibly  subversive,  and  an  encouragement  to  those 
who  would  imperil  the  State  and  rights  estabHshed. 
Similarly  Peel,  although  with  Peel  the  process — the 
order  of  change — is  reversed  in  accordance  with 


84       STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

the  caU  and  tyranny  of  conditions,  in  the  know- 
ledge of  which  is  the  power  of  the  statesman.    With 
the   growth   of   manufactures   and  commerce  had 
come,  as  Peel's  father  observed,  the  rise  of  a  sup- 
plementary race  of  men  in  Britain.    Their  interests 
demanded,  and  poUticaUy  were  entitled  to,  recog- 
nition,  and   to   recognition   not   in   constitutional 
provisions  merely,  as  in  the  great  Reform  Act  of 
1832,  but  in  substantial  measures  of  State  policy. 
Considerations  of  policy  forced  upon  Peel  a  revision 
and  readjustment  of  the  principles  of  his  politics. 
Against  him  was  brought  a  charge  of  inconsistency, 
but  it  was  an  inconsistency  of  such  quality  as  is  a 
tribute  to  the  statesman  and  not  his  condemnation, 
marking  off  expediency  in  affairs  of  State  from  the 
opportunism  of  the  mere  politician.    In   1846  he 
was  impelled  in  self-defence  to  a  definition  of  public 
duty.    There  is  this  *  valuable  privilege  in  power,' 
he  said,  that  it '  affords  great  facilities  to  the  holder 
of  it  to  render  his  country  service,  according  to  his 
sense  of  the  public  good.'  2    Two  years  before  he 
had  used  words  that  may  serve  to  define  the  relation 
of  modern  constitutional  statesmanship  to  popular 
government  without  impairing  either  the  dignity 
of  statesmanship  or  its  efficiency  :    '  Our  duty  is  to 
take  a  comprehensive  view  of  all  the  great  interests, 
commercial,  political,  social,  and  moral,  of  all  classes 
of  this  great  empire.    It  is  a  maxim  of  distributive 
justice,  a  maxim  of  law,  a  technical  rule,  in  the 


SOME   MARKS   OF   ENGLISH  HISTORY 


86 


administration  of  justice — volenti  non  fit  injuria — 
that  injury  cannot  be  to  him  who  consents  to  it ; 
but  you,  devoted  to  perform  the  duties  of  watching 
the  welfare  of  a  great  country,  you  cannot  act  upon 
that  principle.  And  it  cannot  be  a  greater  proof 
of  your  possessing  attributes  appropriate  to  the 
duties  of  legislation,  that  you  reverse  the  maxim 
volenti  non  fit  injuria,  and  you  tell  the  people, 
**  We  will  resist  your  wishes  in  order  to  promote 
your  welfare "  :  "  We  will  discharge  the  duty 
assigned  to  us,  on  account  of  our  being  able  to  take 
a  more  comprehensive  and  more  beneficent  view 
than  you  can."  I  protest,  then,  against  the  doctrine 
that  we  are  to  concede  because  it  is  the  popular  will. 
If  we  are  satisfied  that  it  is  not  for  the  popular 
interests,  then  it  is  our  painful  but  necessary  duty 
to  resist.'  '  *  Nothing  could  be  more  base,'  he  said 
in  1846,  *  on  the  part  of  a  pubHc  man  than  to  protect 
himself  from  danger  by  pretending  a  change  of 
opinion ;  or  more  inconsistent  with  the  duty  he 
owes  to  his  sovereign  and  country,  than  if,  seeing 
reason  to  alter  his  course,  he  forbore  to  make  the 
alteration  by  the  fear  of  being  taunted  with  a  charge 
of  inconsistency.'  *  In  proposing  his  momentous 
changes  of  1846  he  contended  that  he  was  *  yielding 
to  the  force  of  argument  and  conviction,  and  acting 
upon  the  results  of  enlarged  experience.'  ^  A  posi- 
tion like  that  claimed  by  Peel,  and  acted  upon  by 
the  two  Pitts  and  by  others,  must  lead  to  breaches 


86       STUDIES  m   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

of  the  conventions  of  politics  and  of  political 
morality  under  a  parliamentary  party  system,  but, 
inasmuch  as  parties  are  subsidiary  to  the  State, 
such  breaches  are  readily  condoned  :  the  code  of 
party  obHgation  and  honour  is  not  universally 
binding,  and  can  never  be  clearly  defined  nor 
rigidly  enforced. 

Crises  test  the  character  of  nations  as  of  indi- 
viduals, accentuating  some  traits,  depressing  others, 
and  giving  to  the  ^  central  or  dominant  virtue  an 
opportunity  to  assert  itself  and  prove  its  worth. 
Of  France  during  the  Revolution  it  has  been  said 
that '  in  a  few  years  '  she  '  described  the  whole  circle 
of  human  society.'  ^  That  crisis  or  succession  of 
crises  is  unequalled  in  the  history  of  England  for 
the  display  of  character  on  a  large  scale  and  in  vivid 
surroundings  and  for  mental  ingenuity  and  executive 
boldness  in  swift  emergencies.  But  at  several  crises 
and  on  many  calls  for  decisive  action  Enghsh  char- 
acter, individual  and  national,  is  seen  in  clear 
expression,  with  something  permanent  and  domin- 
ant in  its  attributes.  In  the  history  of  modern 
Britain  three  crises  called  for  the  practical  virtues 
of  a  poHtically  gifted  people — that  of  Puritan 
ascendency  and  that  of  the  Revolution  of  1688, 
at  both  of  which  constitutional  securities  were  in 
the  making,  and  that  of  the  French  Revolution, 
when,  owing  to  narrowness  and  defects  in  the  equip- 


SOME   MARKS  OP  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


87 


ment  of  the  political  machine  in  Britain,  constitu- 
tional securities  that  were  inherently  sound,  though 
imperfect,  had  themselves  to  be  safeguarded  against 
external,  alien  aggression — against  influences  from 
revolutionary  France. 

The  first  of  these  critical  periods — the  Puritan — 
bears  close  analogy  to  the  French  Revolution  in 
fertility  of  ideas,  in  rapid  succession  of  crises,  and 
in  the  tortuous,  rather  than  expedient,  executive 
action  taken  by  those  m  authority  or  in  power; 
and  yet  even  from  this  time  of  crisis,  when  the  duty 
of  man,  poUtical  and  religious,  seemed  to  consist 
in  ridding  hunself  lustily  of  that  which  burdened 
him  (as  Harrington,'  the  theorist  in  poUtics,  said  of 
Rogers,  the  fanatic  in  religion) — even  amid  these 
most  unfavourable  conditions  in  the  State  and  owing 
to  them — there  came  a  strong  appeal  for  an  adjust- 
ment of  contending  principles  through  a  surrender 
of  whatever  was  extreme  and  perverse  ;   and  in  the 
result  *  the  people  of  England  came  to  hate  the 
name   of   a   Commonwealth   without   loving   their 
liberty    the    less.'  ®    The    prevailing    note    of    the 
Puritan  era  in  our  politics  is  that  of  ideal  and 
dogma,  and  of  such  ideals  and  dogmas  as  could  not 
be  uniformly  enforced — could  not  be  embodied  in 
effective  laws  and  injunctions — ^because  of  discord 
so  marked  that  even  the  Puritans  were  not  at  one 
among  themselves :    whence,   in  practice,   experi- 
ment and  innovation,  but  it  was  an  experimental 


88       STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

innovation  aimed  at  a  monarchic  system  which  those 
who  framed  and  sought  to  apply  the  experiments 
held  to  be  unconstitutional,  unnational,  im-English. 
Even  these  experimenters,  moreover,  claimed  that 
precedent  was  with  them  in  their  first  efforts  ;  and 
in  their  later  efforts  they  interpreted  precedent  in 
their  own  way  and  for  their  own  ends.  Voices  were 
raised  for  political  symmetry,  and  a  formal  consti- 
tutional harmony,  with  the  past.  When  it  was 
suggested  that  the  Protector  should  take  the  title 
*  King,'  CromweUian  sympathisers  with  the  pro- 
posal urged  that  there  would  thus  be  a  reversion 
to  *  the  best-known  and  most  agreeable  kind  of 
government  to  the  English  people '  :  the  founda- 
tion would  be  an  '  old  and  sure  '  one  :  those  govern- 
ments are  best  '  which  are  upon  proof  and  long 
experience  of  our  ancestors,  and  not  such  as  are 
only  in  notion,  such  whereby  the  people  may 
imderstand  their  liberty,  and  the  Lord  Protector 
his  privilege.'  *  Precedents  could  be  and  were 
variously  interpreted  even  by  Puritan  politicians  : 
in  the  sphere  of  jurisdiction,  in  particular,  diffi- 
culties  were  encountered  and  recurred  :  therefore 
it  was  necessary  to  approach  them  not  as  Common- 
wealth-men merely,  not  merely  as  ParHament-men, 
but  as  Englishmen  of  the  day  and  as  Englishmen 
with  a  trust :  *  We  live  as  Parliament  men  but  for  a 
time,  but  we  live  as  Englishmen  always.'  ^®  There 
was  a    debatable   land   within  which  the  general 


SOME   MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


89 


powers  and  pretensions  to  competence  of  the  House 
of  Commons  trenched  upon  the  distinctive  author- 
ity of  the  Protector  in  what  concerned  the  *  public 
safety,'  and  in  this  region  of  danger,  while  each 
should  be  alert  and  jealous,  both  at  times  *  must 
wink ' :  they  should  know  how  to  *  wink  at  one 
another.'  ^^  Cromwell  found  too  few  in  his  Houses 
of  Commons  to  whom  he  could  look  to  do  this  in 
the  right  way  for  him  ;  and  when  the  Protector 
determined  that  there  should  be  something  to  stand 
between  him,  acting  as  executive  and  for  a  State, 
and  the  '  tumultuary '  spirits  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  presuming  to  speak  for  the  nation,  and 
it  was  decided  that  there  should  again  be  a  Second 
House,  he  was  solicitous  that  the  men  nominated 
by  him  to  this  '  Other  House '  should  be  men  of 
the  responsive  type — men  not  hypercritical  and 
querulous,  but  of  the  kind  that  '  shall  meet  you 
wheresoever  you  go,  and  shake  hands  with  you, 
and  tell  you  it  is  not  titles,  nor  lords,  nor  party, 
that  they  value,  but  a  Christian  and  an  English 
interest.'  ^^ 

That  Cromwell  and  the  '  pretended '  Common- 
wealth, which  was  not  his  own,  failed  to  adjust 
and  reconcile,  is  to  be  ascribed  to  departure  from 
English  instincts — individual,  social  and  political — 
to  the  intrusion  and  obtrusiveness  of  a  too  rigid 
system  of  reHgion  and  poUtics  and  a  too  cold  and 
austere  scheme  of  life — to  an  attempt  to  force  mind 


90        STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

and   conduct.    There   was   un-English   neglect   by 
Puritan  politicians,  and  by  Puritans  not  poUtically 
minded,  of  those  habits,  although  they  were  stiU 
not  firmly  rooted,  and   of   those   limitations   and 
securities  of  EngUshmen,  although  they  were  not 
yet  fully  accepted,  which  required,  even  in  their 
incomplete  strength,  that,  by  reason  of  the  nature 
of  what  was  assailed  and  of  what  was  intended  to 
prevail,  there  should  be  spontaneous  and  perhaps 
unperceived  growth — spontaneous  and  thereby  the 
stronger.     The  failure  of  Puritanism  at  its  best  to 
effect  its  self-assigned,  earnestly  assumed,  national 
purpose  was  due  to  its   superabundant  fervency, 
inseparable  from  its  own  character  and  ideal,  to  its 
lack  of  Enghsh  restraint,  and  to  resulting  artifices 
and  excesses  on  the  part  of  many  of  its  exponents 
and    devotees— perverters    of    the    best ;     but    its 
failure  to  stamp  its  impress,  in  its  higher  attributes, 
on  EngUshmen  in  the  mass  was  due,  also,  to  the 
expected    recipients— the    average    Englishman    of 
Elizabethan  ancestry— being  devoid  of  an  eleva- 
tion and  spirituaHty  that  are  un-EngHsh,  that  are 
more    than    or    other    than    EngUsh.    The    limits 
within  which  operates  the  capacity  of  the  State  to 
direct  and  to  coerce  had  been  passed,  especially  of 
a  State  whose  right  to  sovereignty  was  in  dispute  : 
by  imperfect  foundation  and  by  transgression  the 
State  of  the  Commonwealth  lost  its  power— had  to 
submit  to  the  revocation  of  power  :  by  self-assertion 


SOME   MARKS  OP  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


91 


the  nation — the  community  in  so  far  as  there  was 
one,  within  a  nation  discordant — had  to  repudiate 
the  State.  In  this  repudiation  and  sense  of  relief 
there  was  loss  as  well  as  gain,  for  there  had  been 
involved  more  than  art  and  manner  of  rule — more 
than  a  mere  method  of  achieving. 

'  It  is,'  says  Clarendon  in  criticising  Hobbes,  *  a 
very  hard  matter  for  an  architect  in  State  and 
poUcy,  who  doth  despise  all  precedents,  and  will  not 
observe  any  rules  of  practice,  to  make  such  a  model 
of  government  as  will  be  in  any  degree  pleasant  to 
the  governor,  or  governed,  or  secure  for  either.'  ^^ 
'  And  he  is  much  a  better  counsellor,  who  by  his 
experience  and  observation  of  the  nature  and 
humor  of  the  people  who  are  to  be  governed,  and 
by  his  knowledge  of  the  laws  and  rules  by  which 
they  ought  to  be  governed,  gives  advice  what  ought 
to  be  done,  than  he  who  from  his  speculative  know- 
ledge of  mankind,  and  of  the  rights  of  government, 
and  of  the  nature  of  equity  and  honor,  attained 
with  much  study,  would  erect  an  engine  of  govern- 
ment by  the  rules  of  geometry,  more  infallible  than 
experience  can  ever  find  out.'  ^*  A  restoration  of 
institutions — monarchy.  House  of  Lords,  Church — 
was  historically  befitting  in  England  in  1660,  but 
the  old  manner  of  viewing  them  could  never  be 
restored  in  the  average  consciousness  and  sense  of 
the  community.    The  duration  and  the  intensity 


92       STUDIES  m  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

of  the  crisis  through  which  England  had  passed 
made  it  certain  that  there  would  henceforth  be 
sidelights  along  the  central  path  of  the  nation's 
development,  and  that  over  the  deviations  from  that 
path  the  central  Hght  of  the  State  must  throw  itself, 
with  a  power  to  illumine  measured  by  foreknow- 
ledge of  directions  and  tendencies.  The  Restora- 
tion which  came  had  regard  too  nearly  exclusive 
for  the  central  path,  and  had  too  Httle  disposition 
to  make  it  broader.  Clarendon  himself,  to  whom 
much  in  the  character  of  the  Restoration  was  due, 
had  not  been  able  to  conceive,  from  the  outset  of  the 
struggle  in  the  reign  of  his  late  master,  '  how  rehgion 
could  be  preserved  without  bishops,  nor  how  the 
government  of  the  State  could  well  subsist,  if  the 
government  of  the  Church  were  altered,'  ^^  and  he 
was  too  pronouncedly  a  supporter  of  the  Church 
of  England  to  reckon  Uberal-mindedly  with  that 
*  composition  of  contradictory  wishes  and  expecta- 
tions '  which  he  thought  must  have  appealed  to 
every  discerning  man  at  the  Restoration  amid  *  the 
general  noise  and  acclamation,  the  bells  and  the 
bonfires.'  ^^ 

The  Revolution  of  1688,  less  extreme  than  the 
Puritan  revolution,  is  more  typical  of  the  poHtical 
methods  and  traits  of  Englishmen.  It  was  a  move- 
ment and  a  deUberate  effort  to  defend  rights  en- 
dangered :    it  was  an  assertion  of  the  rights  of 


SOME  MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


93 


I 


Englishmen,  not  of  the  rights  of  mere  individuals, 
not  of  the  *  rights  of  man  '  :    it  was  designed  to 
conserve,  not  to  subvert.    Experience  was  made 
the  test :   thus,  '  it  hath  been  found  by  experience  ' 
(it  was  declared)  '  inconsistent  with  the  welfare  of 
this  kingdom  to  be  ruled  by  a  Popish  prince '  ; 
the  several  clauses  in  the  Bill  of  Rights  are  aimed  at 
specific  breaches  of  faith  and  violations  of  existing 
law  by  James  n.  :    Locke,   the  apologist  of  the 
Revolution,  was  writing  at  the  time  that  *  a  good 
prince  ' — an  executive  able  and  trusted — *  cannot 
have  too  much  prerogative.'  ^^    The  rights  claimed 
are   claimed    as   *  true,   ancient   and    indubitable.* 
The   historic   deed  of    1688-89  was   revolutionary 
in  its  main  external  manifestation — the  deposition 
of  the  king  ;    but  in  substance  and  in  immediate 
issue  it  was  protective.    It  professed  to  be  a  design 
and  a  last  resource  to  save  the  constitution— to 
save  even  the  monarchy — from  itself  owing  to  the 
excesses  of  the  monarch,  from  whom  as  from  the 
chief  member  loyalty  to  the  constitution — to  what 
was  estabhshed  in  Church  and  in  State — was  pre- 
eminently due.    Through  the  use  of  some  political 
instruments  and  powers  by  the  monarch,  and  through 
the  ineffectiveness  of  others  against  his  excesses, 
men   of   different   rehgious   persuasions   had   been 
exposed  to  dangers  in  common  from  the  Roman 
CathoUc    head    of    a    non-Romanist    State.     They 
therefore   united   for   a   fresh   definition   of   these 


94       STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

instruments  and  powers  within  the  constitution, 
and,  with  the  opportunity  given  to  Whigs  by  the 
action  of  James  and  with  the  excuse  available  to 
Tories,  it  became  possible  to  construe  personal 
kingship  in  terms  appropriate  to  ofl&cial  kingship — 
to  think  of  King  in  terms  of  the  Crown.  Whereas, 
under  the  first  of  the  Tudors,  authority  had  to  save 
liberty  by  subjecting  it  to  tests  and  restraints, 
Uberty  or  the  conscious  possessors  of  English 
liberties  had  now  to  save  authority  or  to  make  its 
exercise  salutary  by  constitutional  definition,  ex- 
pansion and  adaptation.  The  notes,  therefore,  of 
the  Revolution  are  found  in  precedent  and  rights 
established  ;  and  in  its  course  and  conduct,  to  make 
it  national,  to  prevent  it  from  being  merely  partisan 

merely  Whig — it  had  to  submit  to  compromises 

and  to  some  political  inconsistency  for  the  practical 
achievement  of  a  great  poHtical  purpose.  The 
principles  of  the  Revolution  do  not  bear  logical 
analysis  ;  there  came  to  be  a  Revolution  myth  in 
our  history  :  the  Revolution  was  interpreted  by 
Whigs  conveniently  for  party  ends.  The  con- 
stitutionalism which  resulted  and  is  still  in  process 
of  development  is  not  a  rational  harmony.  But 
both  Revolution  and  result,  together  with  the 
process  by  which  that  result  or  the  present  stage  in 
the  process  has  been  reached,  rank  high  in  modem 
history  as  illustrations  of  genuinely  pohtical  aptitude 
and  method,  of  the  limited  range  and  yet  the  per- 


SOME   MARKS   OF   ENGLISH  HISTORY 


95 


manence  of  theory  and  ideal,  of  the  force  of  circum- 
stance in  the  practice  of  politics. 

In  Britain  at  the  French  Revolution  much  that 
was  inadequate  and  had  been  by  many  condemned 
in  the  facts  of  government  had  to  withstand  much 
that  professed  to  be  absolute  and  to  many  seemed 
unassailable  in  the  theory  of  poHtics.     There  was 
danger  in  the  glitter  of  theories  from  France  just 
because  there  were  very  distinct  flaws  in  the  constitu- 
tion in  Britain.     Flaws  had  been  admitted  by  Pitt ; 
and  when  Pitt,  with  his  energies  deflected  by  the 
Revolution,  ceased  to  be  the  constitutional  reformer, 
his  defence  was  not  that  of  ordinary  expediency, 
but  was  found  mainly  in  the  call  for  national  and 
State  '  security  '—the  ultimate  call  in  government. 
The  protest— rights  withheld  from  '  the  people  '— 
was  met  by  the  argument  of  advantages  akeady 
won  for  the  nation  as  a  whole  :    the  imperfections 
of  the  present  must  be  viewed  in  due  relation  to 
benefits  from  the  past.     Against  equality  as  a  theory 
and  a  cry  was  set  equihbrium  as  a  fact  and  a  benefit : 
constitutional  equihbrium,  not  perfect  but  akeady 
tested  and  tolerable— the  equilibrium  of  a  constitu- 
tion which  was  the  pohtical  expression  of  the  life, 
of  both  the  energy  and  the  apathy,  of  the  people 
of  England— was  not  to  be  imperiUed  by  the  doctrine 
or  opinion  of  equahty— an  equahty  that  was  not 
the  true  historic  fulfihnent  of  the  life  of  any  people 


96       STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

whatsoever  ;  and  the  appreciable  and  lesser  evil 
of  particular  flaws  in  the  constitutional  machine 
must  be  endured  for  a  time  owing  to  inappreciable 
and  greater  danger  then  threatened  from  subver- 
sive and  un-EngUsh  designs  on  the  whole  being  of 
the  State. 

At  the  French  Revolution  the  EngHsh  political 
character  asserts  itself  more  decisively  even  than 
at  the  Revolution  of  1688,  for  the  competing  force 
was  deeper  and  stronger  :  it  manifests  and  fixes 
itself  against  what  claims  universaHty,  against  that 
which  it  could  not  understand,  against  that  which 
it  could  not  at  once  assimilate.  We  cannot,  indeed, 
say  that  any  one  and  only  one  type  of  mind  in 
politics  was  either  threatened  then  or  prevailed 
then  in  Britain.  The  assailing  force  itself,  from 
Prance,  was  not  single,  but  composite  and  full  of 
surprises.  There  was  not  a  point — one  point — 
of  attack  :  there  was  no  concentration  of  a  hostile 
political  force.  We  of  a  later  age — mere  investi- 
gators and  reviewers,  dispassionate  in  considering 
even  times  that  *  tried  ,  the  souls  of  men' — can 
see  that  the  constitution,  partly  reformed  of  late 
for  purposes  of  administration,  and,  though  with 
imperfections  and  anomaHes  in  structure  and  com- 
petence, so  far  a  worthy  instrument  as  at  least 
to  tolerate,  if  not  to  promote,  Pitt's  remedial  mea- 
sures for  five  years  before  the  Revolution,  was  a 
constitution  fit  to  resist  the  onset  of  doctrines  that 


SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


VJ 


were  of  almost  limitless  range,  that  were  without 
distinctive  national  character,  and  were  not  pecu- 
liarly applicable  to  Britain  under  the  guidance  of 
Pitt.  The  problem  was  that  of  calculating  the 
force  of  an  impact  which  was  itself  to  be  warded 
off  ;  and,  owing  to  conditions  and  events  in  France 
more  than  in  Britain,  the  policy  of  caution  led 
through  continuance  and  excess  to  severity  and 
repression ;  and  it  can  have  only  this  measure  of 
defence — ^in  the  circumstances  almost  adequate — 
that  it  evoked  rather  intellectual  protests  and 
sectional  opposition  than  a  resentment  genuinely 
national.  A  nation  logical,  passionately  given  over 
to  politics,  even  with  the  appliances  then  available 
in  Britain,  a  nation  not  cautious  like  the  English, 
would  have  been  less  easily  restrained  by  the 
measures  taken  and  under  the  methods  enforced. 
A  nation  not  gifted  politically  would  not  have 
been  able  in  succeeding  years  to  incorporate  so 
much  of  what  is  valid  and  lastingly  righteous  in 
the  principles  of  the  French  Revolution. 


Hardly  less  significant  than  these  crises  are 
particular  and  minute  illustrations  of  expedient 
action,  of  application  and  extension  of  precedent, 
and  of  unforeseen  success  in  the  history  of  England, 
if,  indeed,  in  reviewing  a  political  growth  which 
has  been  largely  unconscious,  we  may  thus  draw 
a  distinction  between  what  may  seem  incidental 


98       STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

and  what  has  proved  to  be  essential :  for  where  the 
incidental  has  been  constructive  it  is  not  to  be 
kept  separate  from  the  essential.    What  a  people 
(or  a  political  commimity  within  it)  does,  or  joins 
m  doing,  or  permits  to  be  done,  and  the  manner 
of  doing  it,  from  force  of  habit— doing  it  '  by  the 
way  '—when  the  nation  is  not  on  its  trial,  or  when 
responsible  rulers  and  politicians  are  not  gravely 
deliberate,  form  the  normal  index  of  the  nation's 
character,    capacity    and    limitations    in    poHtics. 
Thus  the  rise  of  county  representation  in  a  national 
English  ParUament  is  intimately  bound  up  with 
the    earher    and    convenient    practice    of    electing 
representative  knights  to  choose  grand  juries  for 
the  conduct  of  the  modes  of  trial  organised  under 
Henry  ii.  :    a  device  successful  on  a  narrow  scale 
was   accepted   and   appUed   as   a   feasible   design 
in   the   wider   ranges   of   political    initiative   and 
control.     Similarly,  the  plan  of  assessment  of  taxa- 
tion by  a  local  jury,  found  to  be  a  convenience, 
came  to  be  applied,  as  a  convenience,  and  owing 
to  its  success,  for  national  purposes  in  the  national 
or  central  assembly,  and  in  short  time  this  assembly 
not  only  granted  the  tax  and  decreed  or  concurred 
in  its  amount,  but  also  began  to  demand  as  a 
right  the  power  to  settle  its  appropriation  for  pur- 
poses admitted  by  itself  to  be  necessary  and  national. 
A  device  grew  into  a  precedent,  and  was  merged  in 
a  larger  policy — in  the  wider  political  action  taken. 


SOME   MARKS   OF   ENGLISH  HISTORY 


Vo 


These  transitions  when  looked  back  upon  seem 
natural  and  easy  :  we  term  them  *  developments.' 
But  we  must  not,  unhistoricaUy,  read  the  signifi- 
cance  of  the  later  and  broader  process  into  the 
earher  and  narrower.  The  earher  principles  and 
practices  were  not  adopted  with  the  hope  and  inten- 
tion of  expanding  them  in  such  way  as  further  to 
limit  monarchic  authority  and  further  to  extend 
parliamentary  rights  and  powers,  if  they  proved 
successful :  there  was  not,  in  short,  a  design  of 
educating  the  people  in  habits  of  self-government. 
Yet,  while  the  ultimate  results — the  full  application 
or  apphcability  of  the  principles  and  their  bearings 
— were  not  foreseen,  the  earher  practices  are  more 
than  casually  connected  with  a  broader  process  and 
the  wider  results.  They  are  parts  of  an  understand- 
ing, though  not  of  a  preconceived  design  :  they  are 
links  in  a  diversified  chain  of  political  step  and  con- 
sequence, forged  not  swiftly  by  reason,  but  slowly 
with  time  and  circumstance. 

The  history  of  the  parliamentary  oath  since 
1679  is  a  striking  illustration  of  EngUsh  ways  in 
pohtics,  especially  the  history  of  the  oath  as  affecting 
Jews  desiring  to  sit  in  Parhament.  In  1850  Baron 
Lionel  Nathan  de  Rothschild  claimed  to  take  the 
necessary  oaths  with  the  omission  of  the  words  *  on 
the  true  faith  of  a  Christian.'  By  resolution  he  was 
declared  to  be  ineligible  :  he  might  still  rank  as 
the  choice  of  the  electors,  but  he  could  not  sit  and 


100     STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

vote.     In    1858,   after   much   discussion   and   con- 
tention, a  compromise  of  English  type  was  struck. 
One  act  of  that  year  (21  and  22  Vict.  c.  48)  intro- 
duced a  single  oath  for  the  several  oaths  of  aUegiance, 
supremacy    and    abjuration    required    since    1679, 
but  retamed  the  words  '  upon  the  true  faith  of  a 
Christian '  ;   and  by  the  next  act  (21  and  22  Vict, 
c.  49),  at  once  the  complement  and  the  denial  of  the 
preceding,  either  House  of  ParHament  might  by 
resolution  permit  a  member  of  the  Jewish  rehgion 
to  omit  the  words,  *  I  make  this  declaration  upon 
the  true  faith  of  a  Christian.'     In  1860  the  resolu- 
tion,  of  force  only  for  a  session,  was  converted  into 
a  standing  order.     FinaUy,  the  ParUamentary  Oaths 
Act,  1866,  prescribed  a  form  of  oath  from  which 
the  words  were  altogether  omitted.     'If  you  can 
show,'  Peel  had  said  in  1848,  '  that  the  mainten- 
ance  of  certain  reUgious  opinions  of  the  Jews  is  a 
decisive  proof  of  their  civil  unworthiness,  you  may 
have  a  right  to  exclude  them  from  power  ;  but  the 
onus  of  showmg  this  is  imposed  upon  you.    The 
presumption  is  in  then'  favour.     The  presumption 
is,  that  a  Jew,  as  a  subject  of  the  British  Crown, 
is' entitled  to  all  the  quaUfications  and  the  privileges 
of  a  British  subject.    You  may  defeat  that  claim 
by  proof  of  danger  to  the  State  from  admitting  it ; 
but  the  onus  of  proof  Hes  upon  you.'  !»    '  There 
is  no  jealousy  of  the  Crown,'   remarked  Peel  in 
the  same  characteristic  speech,  '  in  respect  of  the 


SOME   MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


101 


appointment  of  Jews  to  the  most  important  civil 
offices,  but  such  jealousy  of  the  Christian  electors 
of  this  country  that  you  will  not  permit  them  to 
send  the  man  of  their  choice  to  this  House,  if  he 
happen  to  be  a  Jew.'  ^^  The  inconsistency  was  of 
a  kind  that  has  had  many  examples  in  our  political 
history.  The  definition  of  the  rules  of  Parliament, 
not  less  than  the  determination  of  laws,  has  pro- 
ceeded piecemeal.  Schemes  of  action,  principles 
of  conduct,  have  not  been  made  logically  complete 
— politically  symmetrical.  Grievances,  conditions 
of  injustice,  especially  such  as  are  not  general  in 
their  reference,  have  not  usually  been  remedied 
until  they  have  become  notorious  and  flagrant. 

Let  us  take  as  a  final  illustration  one  important 
both  for  principle  and  in  practice  in  English  politics 
— what  is  termed  the  *  rule  of  law  '  under  the  EngUsh 
constitution.  The  exceptional  and  privileged  posi- 
tion accorded  to  officers  of  State  on  the  Continent 
under  the  protection  of  established  *  administrative 
right,'  whenever  charges  are  brought  against  them 
and  offences  are  alleged  in  the  performance  of  their 
duties,  is  unknown  to  and  is  alien  from  the  working 
and  the  spirit  of  the  poHtical  system  of  Britain. 
In  Britain,  officers  of  State  and  the  citizen,  the 
authorities  (under  the  Crown  but  acting  for  it) 
and  the  subject,  are  equally  amenable  to  law  and 
to  the  same  law,  in  procedure  and  in  penalties. 
That  is  an  enduring  provision  in  favour  of  civil 


102     STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

liberties.    But   it   has,    or   may   have,    its   short- 
comings and  perils  at  times  of  civil  commotion — 
in  days  of  riots  and  riotous  assemblies.     A  weak 
executive— an  executive  temporarily  and  at  just 
the  wrong  moment  weak-kneed— may  hesitate  to 
exceed  the  normal  powers  and  functions  entrusted 
to  it,  may  shrink  from  strong  and  energetic  mea- 
sures, owing  to  dread  of  the  immediately  sovereign 
power  of  Parhament  and  of  the  ultimately  sovereign 
power  of  the  people.    Such  has  been  the  test  of  a 
measured,    discreet   statesmanship    in    administra- 
tion (in  which  as  much  as  in  legislation  statesman- 
ship is  revealed)  in  turbulent  and  critical  days  in 
our  history— in  those  of  the  Jacobite  RebeUions, 
on  the  occasion  of  the  discussion  on  general  war- 
rants in  the  case  of  Wilkes,  when  the  arguments 
for  and  against  exceptional  executive  power  were 
carefully  marshalled,  and  notably  in  the  years  of 
Pitt's  disabhng  and   coercive  measures  after  the 
French  Revolution.    In  Britain,  whenever  gravity 
and  urgency  can  be  adduced  in  defence  or  in  mere 
extenuation,  there  exists  the  favourable  presump- 
tion  that   Parliament   will   stamp    with    its   own 
approval  the  action  of  ministers  by  passing  a  bill 
of  indemnity  to  legaHse,  in  respect  of  the  particular 
case,    what    in    normal    circumstances    would    be 
illegal.    In  a  word,  the  merits  of  the  case,  of  the 
specific  exercise  of  authority,  are  made  the  determin- 
ing factor.    The  presumption  is  in  favour  of  liberty 


SOME   MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


103 


— of  the  nation  with  its  civil  liberties :  authority — 
the  State — ^is  on  the  defensive  :  it  has  to  show  cause 
for  action  that  is  exceptional,  and  must  look  to  the 
common-sense  judgment  of  Parhament  and  of  the 
community,  or  to  the  play  and  force  of  party — ^the 
everyday  court  of  appeal  in  poHtics. 

The  testimony  of  political  thought  in  England 
coincides,  in  the  main,  with  the  conclusions  to  be 
drawn  from  political  action.  A  pure  poUtical 
philosophy,  in  detachment  from  the  conditions  and 
the  facts  of  poHtics,  is  not  to  be  looked  for  appro- 
priately in  Britain.  Rule  of  thumb  has  stamped 
its  impress  and  its  check — a  check,  on  the  whole, 
salutary — on  the  free  and  aspiring  spirit  of  Truth. 
The  best  poUtical  thought  in  Britain  (to  the  ex- 
clusion, as  here  irrelevant,  of  that,  in  itself  valu- 
able, of  men  who  rank  mainly  as  men  of  action  in 
poHtics) — the  poUtical  thought  of  Fortescue  and 
Sir  Thomas  Smith,^®  Bacon  and  Milton,  Hobbes 
and  Locke,  Burke  and  Bentham — ^bears  on  an 
actual  constitution  or  on  poUtical  problems,  usually 
immediate  and  pressing,  not  merely  on  a  poUty 
ideal  or  distantly  attainable.  Similar,  yet  more 
striking,  is  the  testimony  of  the  average  poUtical 
mind  of  modem  Britain — that  drawn  from  regulars, 
irregulars  and  the  mere  skirmishers  in  poUtical 
warfare.  This  we  might  establish  by  reference 
to  the  occasional  poUtical  Uterature  of  Britain,  in 


104     STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

tract,  pamphlet  and  satire,  during  the  long  and 
fruitful  century  of  poHtical  life  and  energy  between 
our  own  Revolution  and  the  French.  The  evidence 
of  mere  word  or  profession  and  the  evidence  of  set 
purpose  are,  from  this  fertile  source,  the  same. 
There  are  many  '  seasonable  '  addresses,  discourses 
and  warnings  ;  many  attempts  to  make  manifest 
and  effective  the  '  plain '  truth  in  '  plain  '  English  ; 
many  assertions  that  the  writer  is  '  just '  or 
'impartial'  and  knows  and  will  tell  the  'facts.' 
Even  the  mere  asseveration — even  the  unwarranted 
assumption  with  its  stratagem — has  in  many  of 
such  cases  its  index  value  for  the  estimate  of  mind 
and  character. 

What  are  the  results  of  our  survey  when  applied 
to  Britain  to-day  ? 

The  lines  of  pohtics  are  not  straight  lines,  and 
they  vary  with  the  age.  The  Hne  of  Truth  may 
be  drawn  straight  by  system-builders,  and  should 
be ;  that  of  poHtical  success  is  not  so  drawn,  and 
can  not  be.  Circumstance  is  often  a  tyrant,  im- 
perious, not  to  be  escaped.  Neither  Uberty  nor 
authority  can  be  autocrat.  Neither,  in  the  pohtics 
of  history,  has  an  immutable  claim  of  right ;  and 
the  terms  of  their  compact  are  not  inviolable. 
Liberty,  in  the  ascendant  in  one  age,  has  to  make 
surrenders  to  authority  in  another  age.  The 
degrees  of  Hberty,   moreover,   differ  in  the  same 


SOME   MARKS   OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


105 


I 


age  in  the  various  relations  and  conditions  of  the 
same    poHtical    society.    The    same    Government 
is  caUed  upon,  from  poHtical  necessity,  to  be  at 
the  same  moment  an  upholder  of  Hberty  in  one 
sphere,   a    stem   agent   of    authority   in    another 
sphere.    Not  least  in  Britain  must  this  be.    Con- 
ditions of  life,  for  the  individual  and  for  associated 
groups   of   men,    are   nowhere   more   varied,    and 
nowhere  more  developed,  than  in  Britain.    But, 
further,    with    Britain    is    the    British    Empire— a 
complex  structure,  with  interests  and  regulations 
of  manifold  diversity  ;    with  many  types  of  con- 
stitution   and    conventions    of    government,    in    a 
constitutional  monarchy  and  parHamentary  com- 
monwealths, in  self-governing  dominions  and  Crown 
colonies,  in  dependencies  and  protectorates  ;    with 
EngHsh  law  and  Scots  law;    with  Roman-Dutch 
law  in  South  Africa  ;  with  Mahometan  law  adminis- 
tered in  British  courts  ;   with  French  law  as  both 
before  and  after  the  Code  Napoleon  ;  with  customs 
so  rude  in  some  territories  that  there  is  need  to 
enjoin  that  they  are  to  be  administered  only  in  so 
far  as  not  *  repugnant  to  natural  justice '  :    this 
Empire  of  Britons  is  an  unrivaUed  and  exacting 
field  for  the  caution  and  discrimination  of  com- 
parative legislation  and  comparative  poHtics  :    it 
has  its  deHcate  ground  for  lawyer  and  for  legislator, 
for  judge  and  for  statesman.    In  such  a  realm  of 
manifold  interests  and  capacities  there  can  be  no 


106     STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

universal,  no  constant  plea  for  liberty,  none  for 
authority.  In  an  age  of  substantial  democracy 
in  Britain — substantial,  even  were  the  forms  absent 
— concessions  may  have  to  be  made  to  privileged 
knowledge,  to  executive  and  administrative  needs, 
and  to  imperial  exigency  in  the  conduct  of  foreign 
poUcy,  untrammelled  by  party  prejudice,  by  exces- 
sive or  inopportune  publicity,  by  a  too  inquisitorial 
and  captious  spirit ;  and  yet  Britain,  as  was  affirmed 
three  hundred  years  ago,  '  can  never  be  undone 
except  by  ParHament.'  The  democracies  within 
the  Empire,  issue  of  the  Mother  of  Parliaments  and 
of  Commonwealths,  may  not  always  trust  each 
other.  Like  kings  and  like  parliaments,  the  people 
have  their  distempers  ;  and  their  distempers  are 
less  easily  controlled.  May  the  remedial  super- 
vision of  our  crowned  republic,  with  sentiment  for 
home  and  for  the  Crown,  provide,  as  under  Victoria, 
and  provide  for  long  the  necessary  corrective  1 
And  if  a  scheme  of  constructive  imperial  statesman- 
ship must  be  forthcoming,  will  liberty  have  to 
make  its  concessions  with  a  view  to  discipline, 
organisation  and  security,  and  make  them  for 
the  strength  and  well-being  of  liberty  itself  ? 

Such  are  problems  of  to-day  and  of  the  immediate 
future  for  the  British  people  in  Britain  and  beyond 
— great  tasks  and  great  responsibilities.  As  hither- 
to, there  will  be  undesigned  success  as  weU  as  deliber- 
ate effort.    There  will  be  need  of  all  the  caution  and 


SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


107 


sagacity  that  have  marked  the  best  of  British 
politics,  and  need  probably  of  more  imagination 
and  prescience  than  can  be  attributed,  with  the 
confidence  of  history,  to  the  British  people  and  to 
British  statesmanship. 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 

'  For  the  more  practical  part  of  government,  which  is  laws, 
I  think  good  to  note  only  one  deficience ;  which  is,  that  all  those 
which  have  written  of  laws,  have  written  either  as  philosophers  or 
as  lawyers,  and  none  as  statesmen.  As  for  the  philosophers,  they 
make  imaginary  laws  for  imaginary  commonwealths,  and  their 
discourses  are  as  the  stars,  which  give  little  light  because  they 
are  so  high.  For  the  lawyers,  they  write  according  to  the  states 
where  they  live  what  is  received  law,  and  not  what  ought  to 
be  law  :  for  the  wisdom  of  a  lawmaker  is  one,  and  of  a  lawyer  is 
another.  For  there  are  in  nature  certain  fountains  of  justice, 
whence  all  civil  laws  are  derived  but  as  streams :  and  like  as 
waters  do  take  tinctures  and  tastes  from  the  soils  through 
which  they  run,  so  do  civil  laws  vary  according  to  the  regions  and 
governments  where  they  are  planted,  though  they  proceed  from 
the  same  fountains.' — Bacon,  The  Advancement  of  Learning, 
book  n.  zxiil.  §  49. 

*  I  think  myself  bound  to  give  you  my  reasons  as  clearly,  and 
as  fully,  for  stopping  in  the  course  of  reformation  as  for  proceeding 
in  it.  My  limits  are  the  rules  of  law  ;  the  rules  of  policy  ;  and 
the  service  of  the  State.' — Burke,  Speech  on  the  Economical 
Reform— Works  (1823),  iii.  321. 

When  we  take  politics  as  a  subject  of  study,  no 
aspersion  is  implied  on  politics  in  practice  or  the 
politics  of  the  politician.    Every  student  of  politics 

108 


POLITICS   AS   A  PRACTICAL   STUDY 


109 


must  try  to  come  to  know  men  and  conditions 
as  they  have  actually  been  in  the  past,  and  as  they 
are  in  his  own  day  :   he  ought  to  give  heed  to  the 
warniag  of  Spinoza.     *  Philosophers,'  said  this  great 
thinker  on  poHtics,  '  view  the  emotions  by  which 
men  are  affected  as  vices  into  which  they  fall  by 
their  own  fault.     They  are  accustomed,  therefore, 
to  laugh  at  them,  to  weep  over  them,  to  carp  at 
them,  and  those  who  would  be  thought  more  pious 
seek  to  hold  them  up  to  abhorrence.     When  they 
do  so,  they  believe  that  they  are  doing  something 
divine  and  that  they  are  raising  themselves  to  the 
very  height  of  wisdom,  whereas  the  knowledge  on 
which  they  pride  themselves  consists  in  much  and 
varied  praise  of  a  human  nature  which  does  not 
exist  anywhere,  and  in  reviling  that  human  nature 
which  does  really  exist.     The  reason  is,  that  these 
philosophers  have  interest  in  men  not  as  they  are, 
but  as  they  would  wish  them  to  be,  and  hence  in 
most  cases  it  is  not  a  true  ethic  at  all  they  have 
written,  but  merely  a  satu-e  upon  human  nature.'  ^ 
It  is  on  such  account,  said  Spinoza,  that  of  all  the 
sciences  or  studies  which  have  a  practical  applica- 
tion, the  theory  of  politics  has  differed  most  widely 
from  the  practice. 

We  need  not  seek  to  prove  the  f utiHty — sometimes 
it  is  the  ponderous  futility — of  much  of  the  thought 
on  politics  in  the  past ;  but,  while  Spinoza's  charge 
is  not  unfounded,  it  is  too  sweeping.    Aristotle, 


110      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

for  example — the  father  of  thinkers  in  the  science 
of  politics,  especially  of  those  who  do  not  despise 
practice — is  always  anxious  to  find  an  explanation 
of  things  and  conditions  as  they  are,  as  when  he 
put  forward  his  defence  of  slavery  in  the  Greek 
City-State  ;  in  his  study  of  the  State  he  is  an  early 
exponent,  not  indeed  of  the  historical  method,  but 
of  a  method  that  has  to  make  appeals  to  history 
and  to  comparative  reasoning  on  politics ;  and  in 
his  book  on  Revolutions,  without  losing  touch 
with  his  own  ideal  for  Society  and  the  State,  he 
is  almost  as  objective  as  Machiavelli,  almost  as 
dispassionate  and  relentlessly  suggestive  as  The 
Prince  in  statecraft.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Dante 
carry  us  by  different  routes  to  the  very  heart  of 
the  medieval  struggle  between  Papacy  and  Empire. 
Machiavelli — the  exact  antithesis  of  the  type  of 
thinkers  to  whom  Spinoza's  charge  was  intended 
to  apply — enjoined  men  in  matters  of  State  to  face 
the  facts  ;  and  from  Machiavelli  and  Guicciardini, 
from  their  successors  and  imitators,  and  from 
Itahan  politics  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  the 
new-bom  diplomacy,  there  issued  those  collections 
of  civil  aphorisms,  those  entertaining  maxims  of 
statecraft,  which  were  designed  by  their  authors, 
compilers  and  editors  to  enlighten  contemporaries 
or  to  fortify  them  on  the  nice  boundary  questions 
of  profit  and  honesty  in  politics.  But  the  study 
of  politics  as  a  science  continued.    It  was  largely 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


111 


through  contemplation  of  the  wars  of  religion  in 
France  that  Bodin  was  led  to  the  necessity  for  the 
first  clear  definition  of  sovereignty  ^ — a  central  con- 
ception in  politics  ;   and,  if  we  can  succeed  in  com- 
bining the  democratic  foimdations  in  the  political 
reasoning  of  Bodin's  critic,  Althusius,  with  the  fixed 
and  absolute  conception  of  sovereignty  preferred 
by  Bodin,  we  come  to  see  the  force  of  Spinoza's 
contention,  in  harmony  with  the  true  inwardness 
of  political  struggles  of  his  age,  that  sovereignty 
is  a  relationship  in  which  the  rights  and  the  powers 
of  the  many  who  are  termed   *  subjects '  are  as 
valid  and  essential  as  are  those  of  the  one  or  the 
body  termed  '  the  Sovereign.'     It  is  as  impossible 
to  view  the  politics  of  Hobbes — Spinoza's  contem- 
porary— apart  from  the  Civil  Wars  of  Charles  i.'s 
reign  ^  as  it  is  to  estimate  the  Civil  Government  of 
John  Locke  without  reference  to  the  English  Revolu- 
tion.*   As  to  Hobbes,  indeed,  in  spite  of  his  intel- 
lectual strength  and  aggressiveness  and  his  plea 
for  hard  sagacity,  there  may  be  a  doubt  whether 
his  vast  reading  for  many  years  and  his  persistent 
thinking  for  many  produced  any  work  of  a  typically 
English   character — prudent   in    limits    and  fertile 
in  inspiration  for  practicable  schemes   of  action. 
Hobbes  gained  from  having  been  a  translator  of 
Thucydides,  '  the  most  politic  historiographer  that 
ever  writ,'  one  from  whose  narrations  the  reader 
may  *  draw  out  lessons  to  himself,  and  of  himself  be 


112     STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

able  to  trace  the  drifts  and  counsels  of  the  actors 
to  then*  seat '  ;  ^  but,  instead  of  lamenting,  as  he 
was  himseK  disposed  to  do,  the  time  he  had  given 
in  his  earlier  years  to  the  reading  of  comedies, 
we  may  regret  that  he  did  not  appreciate  human 
nature  a  httle  more  humanly  from  reading  them  : 
we  may  almost  adopt  a  conclusion  of  one  of  Hobbes's 
contemporary  critics — Dr.  Bramhall,  the  combative 
Bishop  of  Deny,  author  of  Castigations  of  Mr.  Hohhes 
and  of  The  Catching  of  Leviathan  : 

*  State  policy,  which  is  wholly  involved  in  matter, 
and  circumstances  of  time,  and  place  and  persons, 
is  not  at  all  like  "  Arithmetic  and  Geometry,"  which 
are  altogether  abstracted  from  matter,  but  much 
more  like  "  Tennis-play."  There  is  no  place  for 
hberty  in  Arithmetic  and  Geometry,  but  in  policy 
there  is,  and  so  there  is  in  Tennis-play.  A  game 
at  Tennis  hath  its  vicissitudes,  and  so  have  States. 
A  Tennis  player  must  change  his  play  at  every 
stroke,  according  to  the  occasion  and  accidents  : 
so  must  a  Statesman  move  his  rudder  differently, 
according  to  the  various  face  of  heaven.  He  who 
mesnageth  a  Commonwealth  by  general  rules,  will 
quickly  ruin  both  himself,  and  those  who  are  com- 
mitted to  his  government.  One  man's  meat  is 
another  man's  poison  ;  and  those  which  are  health- 
ful rules  for  one  Society  at  one  time,  may  be  per- 
nicious to  another  Society,  or  to  the  same  Society 
at  another  time.     Some  Nations  are  like  horses, 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


113 


more  patient  of  their  riders  than  others  ;  and  the 
same  Nations  more  patient  at  one  time  than  at 
another.  In  sum,  general  rules  are  easy,  and 
signify  not  much  in  poHcy.  The  quintessence 
of  policy  doth  consist  in  the  dexterous  and 
skilful  application  of  those  rules  to  the  subject 
matter.'  * 

After  the  time  of  Locke,  to  some  extent  owing 
to  his   influence,   but   mainly   owing   to   economic 
conditions    and    to    material    factors    in   problems 
of  State,  the  better  part  of  thought  on  poUtics  had 
reference  to  utihty  :   it  has  reasoned  about  degrees 
and  objects  in  the  equipment  and  agency  of  govern- 
ment, with  a  view  to  economic  advance  and  social 
amehoration.     Montesquieu   more   than   Eousseau, 
and  Adam  Smith  as  much  as  Bentham,  illustrate 
this  disposition  to  bring  thought  on  poUtics  to  bear 
upon  actual  conditions  in  society.    Adam  Smith's 
assertion  that  in  a  democracy  the  principle  which 
prevails  is  that  of  utility,'  is  a  significant  example 
of  this  practical  disposition ;    and  those  who  have 
examined  the  catalogue  of  Adam  Smith's  library, 
or  have  endeavoured  to  trace  the  Hterary  origins 
of  such  a  section  of  his  great  work  as  that  on  the 
colonies,  need  not  be  reminded  of  the  large  proportion 

of  books  on  history  and  the  practice  of  poHtics 

tools  of  the  workman,  not  mere  embeUishments  for 
a  trifler— that  went  to  the  making  of  The  Wealth  of 
Nations  ;  and,  recalling  this,  we  may  see  something 


114      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

of    worth    in    the    consideration,    'Politics    as    a 
Practical  Study.' 

There  are  three  ways  by  which,  whether  separately 
or,  by  preference,  conjointly,  politics  may  be  studied, 
and  a  poUtical  habit  of  mind  may  be  formed  or 
improved :  first,  the  investigation  of  problems  of 
pontics  of  our  own  day,  as  an  adequate  and  exacting 
enough  pursuit  in  itself  ;  second,  the  study  of  past 
pontics ;  and,  third,  the  study  of  the  thought  of 
the  thinkers  (who  have  not  been  also  men  of  action 
—the  men  of  affairs)  in  poHtics. 

The  first  of  these  studies  or  investigations  or 
branches  of  our  study  is  clearly   of  the  highest 
importance  for  a  nation  which  has  assumed  re- 
sponsibilities for  other  nations,  and  in  which  the 
determination  of  even  the  highest  issues  depends 
upon  numbers — ^upon  counting  majorities,  and  not 
merely  weighing  opinion  and  judgment.    A  people 
cannot   be   too    poHtically  minded,  for  a    people 
politically  minded  will  accept  restraints  and  know 
how  and  for  what  to  submit  to  them  ;  but  it  may 
come  to  be  too  much  engrossed  in  pohtics — attracted 
too  readily  by  phases,  and  swayed  too  easily  by 
passions,  in  politics.    It  is  too  late,  however,  in 
Britain  and  in  most  of  the  States  of  the  western 
world,   to    raise    the   warning   cries,    '  Too   many 
politicians,'  'Too  much  politics.'    It  is  the  duty 
of  the  universities,  of  learned  societies,  of  leaders 


POLITICS   AS   A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


115 


in  pohtics,  and  not  least,  owing  to  present  power, 
is  it  the  duty  of  the  press,  to  see  that  capacity  and 
aptitude  shall  be  as  nearly  as  possible  equal  to 
civic  demand  and  opportunity:  it  is  then*  duty 
to  see  that  there  shall  be  developed  in  the  com- 
munity a  national  consciousness— the  consciousness 
of  being  members  of  a  community— and  a  sense  of 
rectitude  in  pohtics  which  are  the  best  safeguard 
of  the  State  and  the  best  security  for  each  citizen 
—to  see  to  it  that  Ufe  and  energy  shall  be  given 
to  that  higher  ethical  conception  of  the  State  which 
in  the  classic  phrase  is  '  prior  to  the  individual ' 
because  it  is  essential  for  his  development  in  society. 
It  is  necessary  to  make  of  the  people  of  a  country 
a  community. 

PoHtics    in    itself— the    State    as    such— knows 
nothing  of  party.    But  such  a  national  sense  in 
pohtics  will,   at  least,   strengthen  the  true  party 
idea  and  elevate  the  thorough  party  man,  since 
both  are  servants  in  the  interests  of  the  nation. 
A  national  sense  of  this  character  in  pohtics  does 
not  come— nor  can  it  stay— without  toil  and  watch- 
fulness.    Conditions  being  what  they  are  to-day  in 
Britain,  it  may  not  come  in  one  generation  ;  and 
yet  the  gravest  peril  in  our  pohtics  is,  unhappily, 
a  far-reaching  one,  namely,  lest  the  general  educa- 
tion of  the  great  mass  of  the  people— that  kmd  of 
education  which  Government  may  not  exact  and 
cannot  inspect— and  especially  their  training  in  civic 


116      STTTDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

disposition    have    lagged    behind    the    developing 
range  and  nature  of  the  problems  in  citizenship, 
with  the  solution  of  which  the  people  are  entrusted. 
When  Lord  Brougham  and  other  reformers  of  his 
time  used  the  expression  '  the  people,'  they  meant, 
as  Lord  Brougham  was  careful  to  point  out,  *  the 
middle  classes,  the  wealth  and  intelligence  of  the 
country  '—unable,  it  might  be,  to  *  round  a  period  or 
point  an  epigram,'  but  '  solid,  right-judging  men.'  » 
In  accordance  with  a  historically  defensible  inter- 
pretation  of   the   constitutionalism   of   Britain — in 
keeping,  at  least,  with  its  tendency  (and  constitu- 
tionaUsm  is  process,  not  result  or  consummation) 
—the  politicians  and  the  public  mind  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  made  our  democracy  real  in  respect 
of  the  ultimate  seat  of  sovereign  power,  and  real 
and  almost  immediate  without  the  limitations  and 
safeguards  contained  in  the  written  and  rigid  con- 
stitutions of  other  democratic  States.     Even  those, 
however,    who   most   approve   of   this   acceptance 
of   democracy   may   have   then-   doubts   regarding 
the  equipment  of  the  nation  for  the  discharge  of 
high  civic  duty  in  a  manner  commensurate  with 
the  highest  civic  rights.      Yet  the  gravest  crises 
of  history  have  been  produced  by  this  very  dis- 
proportion and  incompatibility  between  situations, 
due  to  economic,  intellectual  and  spiritual  forcee, 
and  the  equipment  of  the  nation  for  coping  with 
them.    That  is  the  tragic  element  in  the  study  of 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


117 


polities— the  effort  of  a  nation,  or  of  a  section  of  it, 
or  of  its  rulers,  made  too  late  to  reach  the  goal  or 
to  escape  being  overwhehned.  The  shortcomings 
of  a  nation  find  it  out. 

In  a  democracy  the  people  can  initiate  and  inspire 
rule,  and  in  large  measure  can  control  it,  but  even 
in  a  democracy  the  people  do  not  themselves  rule  ; 
and  there  should  be  no  political  necessity,  and   it 
may  not  be  materially  and  nationally  beneficial, 
for  the  great  mass  of  them  to  busy  themselves  with 
a   particular   and   detailed   study   of  problems   of 
politics.     All  that  can  be  asked  of  them— and  it 
is  much— is  that  there  shall  be  some  capacity  for 
discrimination,  such  as  is  called  for  in  the  ordinary 
affairs  of  life,  and  a  spirit  of  fair-deaHng,  so  that  the 
sense  of  civic  responsibihty  may  not  be  dormant 
nor  be  perverse.     But,  between  the  many  who  are 
electors   and   the   few   who,   though   seldom   after 
'sifting  and  refining  of  exactest  choice,'  are  the 
nation's  elected,  there  is  a  large  intermediate  body 
of  men,   socially   composite,   and   in   some   of  its 
constituent  elements  unbounded  in  aspiration,  zeal- 
ous to  do  and  not  unwilling  to  dare.    In  respect 
of  influence  and  opportunity,  this  body  of  men— 
not   a   class;     hardly   a   natural   body— has   now 
stepped,   many-footed,   into  the  place  of  the  old 
middle  class  eulogised  by  Brougham  and  encouraged 
by  Peel.    For  it  the  claim  cannot  be  put  forward, 
which  by  Brougham  was  put  forward  for  the  middle 


118     STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

class  of  his  day,  that  *  if  they  have  a  fault,  it  is 
that  error  on  the  right  side— a  suspicion  of  State 
quacks,  a  dogged  love  of  existing  institutions,  a 
perfect  contempt  of  aU  poUtical  nostrums.'  »    Social 
and   inteUectual   grading,   interest   and   ideal— the 
faUure  of  some  to  reckon  with  the  force  of  interest, 
as  of  others  to  admit  the  appeal  from  ideals— make 
this  body  of  men  a  body  of  many  members,  which 
no  principles  in  poUtics  can  weld  together,  except 
in  a  prehminary  confession  of  devotion  to  the  general 
weal,  and  which  no  State  poHcy  will  either  harmonise 
or  destroy.     It  is  an  intermediate  class  in  the  State 
of  to-day,  but  is  a  class  and  is  intermediate  only  in 
respect  of  knowledge  possessed  or  merely  vaunted, 
and  of  political  power  used  by  its  members— power 
that  should  be  respected  and  made  use  of  by  others. 
The    general    education    being    assumed    to    be 
adequate,   and   the   necessary   interest   in   politics 
being  granted,  the  investigation  by  the  members 
of  this  body  of  even  one  of  several  great  questions 
would  be  fruitful  politically  :    the  expediency  and 
the  equity  of  the  claims  advanced  for  trade  unions  ; 
the  scientific  laws  and  mjunctions  determining  how 
emigration  is  related  to  race  and  climate  within 
the  Empire  of  Britain ;    the  strategic  front  of  the 
British  Empire— what  it  is  and  what  it  requires  ; 
the  growth  of   *  nationalism '   in  Canada,   and  Mts 
bearings  on  the  maintenance  and  strengthening  of 
a  poUtical  hope  for  aU  who  are  Britons  ;   the  con- 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL   STUDY 


119 


nection  between  '  imperial '  ideal  and  economic 
faith  in  1846,^®  and  the  connection  and  their  relative 
weight  to-day.  The  study  of  the  British  Empire 
is  in  itself  a  comprehensive  study  :  with  every 
stage  of  civilisation  represented  within  it,  with  its 
different  sources  and  standards  of  law,  and  with 
its  practical  and  decisive  tests  of  economic  principles 
and  constitutional  theories  among  peoples  and  amid 
conditions  so  varied  as  to  render  aU  poHtical  formu- 
lae liable  to  be  questioned  and  uniformity  in  their 
application  inconceivable  or  disastrous — an  Empire 
thus  constituted  provides  material  for  an  exacting 
study.  The  study  is  a  pertinent  one  ;  and  yet  how 
little  imderstood — how  much  less  understood  by  the 
bulk  of  the  people  at  home  than  in  the  colonies — 
is  even  the  cardinal  fact,  that  only  geographically 
does  '  Britain '  mean  this  island-home  of  ours ; 
that  it  means  poHticaUy  the  lands  inhabited  by  the 
British  people  in  homes  chosen  and  established 
by  them,  whether  here  or  in  the  younger  Britains, 
and  that  the  most  important  parts  of  the  geo- 
graphical '  Empire '  for  us  and  for  the  future  of 
our  race— Canada,  Australasia,  and  parts  of  Africa 
— are  not  poHticaUy  Empire  at  all. 

It  holds  as  a  charge  against  aU  except  a  few  in 
Britain  that  we  are  not  diHgent  students  of  a  number 
of  ParHamentary  Papers  and  Reports  of  undoubted 
value,  published  from  time  to  time — such  works 
of  primary  authority  as  those  issued  in  1893  dealing 


120      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

with  the  conditions  of  life  of  the  agricultural  labourer 
in  different  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom,  or  the 
masterly  reports  on  administration  in  Egypt  under 
the  regime  of  Lord  Cromer  ;  or  we  rush  to  such 
reports,  or  permit  others  to  rush  and  hurriedly 
think  for  us,  when  a  question  which  has  really  been 
facing  us  for  some  time  is,  we  say,  sprung  upon  us, 
and  being  upon  us  has,  to  our  dismay,  to  be  grappled 
with.  There  was  lately  published  a  census  of  the 
British  Empire  as  for  1901— the  first  census  of  the 
Empire  in  the  extended  official  sense  of  the  word 
*  census  '  in  the  report.  It  is  a  work  of  almost 
four  hundred  pages,  built  up,  though  not  m  worthy 
descent  from  Domesday  Book,  on  many  returns  and 
reports  for  the  several  parts  of  the  Empire,  '  ranging 
in  bulk  from  a  ten-page  pamphlet  concerning  the 
2,253  inhabitants  of  the  Falkland  Islands  to  an 
elaborate  review  extending  to  more  than  sixty 
volumes  dealing  with  the  manifold  races  of  our 
Indian  Empire,  the  population  of  which  approaches 
295  million  persons  speaking  no  fewer  than  147 
distinct  vernacular  languages.'  This  census  treats 
of  the  population  of  the  Empire  according  to  ages, 
of  density  of  population  per  square  mile,  of  con- 
ditions as  to  marriage,  occupations,  infirmities, 
religions,  degrees  of  education.  Even  a  glance  at 
a  report  thus  conceived  and  thus  constructed^ 
with  certain  trade  and  tariff  reports  in  a  not  dim 
background,   will  serve  to  strengthen  and  enrich 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL   STUDY 


121 


our  knowledge,  while  it  may  moderate  the  passion, 
or  impair  the  widely  acceptable  attributes,  of  a 
peroration  about  the  Empire.  Much  there  is  in 
such  papers  and  reports  to  attract  and  to  educate 
the  genuine  student  of  current  poUtics. 

But— it  will  be  asked— how  is  the  comprehen- 
siveness of  view  or  the  steadiness  in  judgment  to 
be  attained  that  is  necessary  in  considering  a 
problem  of  politics  or  even  in  reading  a  Blue  Book  ? 
The  assumption  of  general  education  and  of  interest 
in  politics  may  not  be  deemed  sufficient  by  the 
mind  that  is  scientific  or  that  is  politically  cautious  ; 
and  we  are  therefore  led  to  seek  aid  from  the  two 
studies  already  mentioned — the  two  other  depart- 
ments of  the  study  of  poHtics — the  aid  of  past 
poUtics  and  the  aid  of  thought  on  poUtics.  Surely, 
not  least  for  the  study  of  man  in  society — for  the 
study  of  mind-in-action — there  must  be  something 
from  the  past  to  help  us  and  authorities  to  appeal 
to — authorities  with  a  reason  for  the  faith  that 
sustains  them. 


By  past  pohtics  we  mean  history — not  the  whole 
of  history,  but  history  in  its  most  educative  sphere. 
History  gives  to  us  the  record  and  the  interpretation 
of  change  in  the  Hfe  of  man  in  society.  It  narrates 
events  ;  it  appreciates  the  changes — examines  the 
causes  and  the  significance  of  the  changes — whereby 
the  present  has  grown  out  of  the  past.    It  discovers 


122      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

conditions  and  reasons  from  them  ;  it  weighs  mo- 
tives and  interests  ;  it  has  to  show  why,  in  the 
conflict  of  judgments  and  the  clash  of  interests, 
certain  courses  of  life  and  action  have  prevailed, 
why  others  have  been  vanquished  or  have  been 
made  subservient,  and — since  we  may  not  always 
sanctify  '  success  ' — how  far  there  may  be  some 
virtue  in  what  is  rejected  and,  apparently,  aban- 
doned. History  has  to  do  with  action,  whence 
results  a  record  of  events  ;  and  such  is  the  narrow, 
yet  ordinary,  conception  of  history.  It  has  to 
do  with  thought  or  idea  as  that  which  has  pro- 
duced or  modified  action  ;  and  such  is  the  fertile, 
but  exacting,  domain  of  history.  The  critical 
sphere  in  history  is  the  sphere  of  estimate,  not  that 
of  mere  investigation  and  statement  of  facts  or 
events — the  display  of  externals  ;  and  the  task  of 
estimating  motive,  action  and  result — the  function 
of  equitable  moderator — is  arduous  in  proportion 
to  the  variety  and  complexity  of  the  conditions 
that  influence  or  may  have  influenced  action  and 
have  determined  the  effects  of  power.  The  truth  of 
estimate — truth  in  estimate — ^is  higher  and  more 
difficult  to  attain  to  than  the  truth  of  mere  fact : 
the  latter  we  can  usually  estabHsh  through  wealth 
in  the  appUances  of  investigation,  if  there  exists 
a  sufficient  wealth  of  material,  for  a  process  qi 
mechanical  accuracy  ;  the  former — truth  of  esti- 
mate— results  not  merely  from  knowledge  of  definite 


POLITICS   AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


123 


facts  (what  is  done),  but  mainly  from  a  weighing 
of  not-definite  power.    Not  merely  the  what  (with 
its  record),  nor  merely  the  how  (with  its  exposition), 
but  the  why  (in  the  history  of  ideas  and  at  the  time 
of   action)   and  the  whither   constitute  the  main 
burden  of  the  historian's  task.    PoUtical  stagnation 
—arrested  development— is  due  usuaUy  to  inertia 
of  mind,  the  force  of  tradition,  the  enthroning  of 
custom  in  authority  :   change  is  due  to  vitahty  of 
mind  operating  on  relations  of  men  to  each  other 
in  social  groupings  and  civic  connections.    History, 
however,    as    record    does    not   reveal    invariable 
correspondence  between  the  actual  facts,  events  or 
material  conditions  of  an  age  and  the  predominant 
or  distinctive  thought  or  even  the  average  mind 
or  mental  temper  of  the  time.    In  a  community, 
conscious  of  interests,  and  with  differing  sets  of 
interests,  it  is  just  this  conflict  between  facts  and 
external  conditions,  on  the  one  hand,  and  mind  or 
tendency  and  aspkation,  on  the  other,  that  transmits 
issues  to  a  subsequent  age,   often  precipitates  a 
crisis,  and  has  been  the  most  persistently  powerful 
cause  both  of  revolution  and  of  progress.     Largely, 
progress  has  been  due  to  protest. 

The  study  of  past  politics  is  a  practical  study, 
and  in  its  most  practical  endeavour  it  deals  with 
situations.  Whatever  be  the  forms  of  government, 
and  however  laudable  in  themselves  the  aspirations 
and  ideals  of  men,  prudence  is  seen  to  be,  as  Burke 


124      STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

insisted,  not  only  the  first  in  rank  of  the  virtues 
poHtical,  but  the  director  of  them  all,  their  regulator 
and  standard.     Except  in  the  elemental  principles 
of  right  and  wrong,  consistency  is  not  in  itself  a 
poUtical  virtue :   time,  place  and  circumstance  are 
determining  factors  in  material  politics — in  most 
questions   of  poUcy.     The  deliberate   and   frankly 
avowed  expediency — or,  to  remove  the  opprobrium, 
let  us  say  *  practicalness  ' — of  statesmanship,  with 
its  charter  of  right  clearly  drawn  up  for  all  suc- 
ceeding time  by  Edmund  Burke,  is  far  removed 
from  the  ignobly  calculating  opportunism  of  the 
professional  poUtician  and  the  trimmer.     '  No  mani- 
festo '  in  poUtics  *  or  election  programme,'  wrote 
Lord   Acton,ii    *  has   the   defining   authority   of   a 
Shorter    Catechism.   ...  Theology    differentiates 
towards    exclusiveness,    while    politics    develop    in 
the  direction  of  comprehension  and  affinity.  .  .  . 
History  does  not  work  with  bottled  essences,  but 
with  active  combinations  ;   compromise  is  the  soul, 
if  not  the  whole  of  politics.     Occasional  conformity 
is  the  nearest  practical  approach  to  orthodoxy  in 
politics,    and    progress    is    along    diagonals.'      Yet 
every  compromise  of  principle  will  be  closely  scrutin- 
ised, and,  in  particular,  although  even  a  vital  prin- 
ciple has  at  times  to  be  sacrificed,  or,  rather,  has 
for  a  time  to  be  suspended — although,  for  example,^ 
the  State,  with  the  salutary  watchword,  authority, 
may,  in  times  of  trial,  have  to  come  to  the  rescue 


POLITICS   AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


125 


of  the  nation's  energies  for  the  nation  itself,  by 
imposing  a  check  upon  an  ill-conditioned  liberty — 
still,  every  plea  of  *  reason  of  State  ' — of  Straffordism 
in  fact  against  Hampdenism  in  principle— must 
stand  out  strong  and  incontestable  before  it  is 
accepted.  Tudor  despotism  was  necessary  and 
enlightened  for  a  time  and  in  the  main  ;  but  the 
trials  of  the  Stewarts  were,  in  part,  suffermgs  for 
the  Tudors. 

The  result  of  study  thus  pursued  is  found  in 
historical-mindedness— the  disposition  to  examine 
the  origins  of  a  problem,  the  dispassionate  review 
of  the  situation,  and  the  appreciation  of  policy  for 
its  after-effects  as  well  as  its  immediate  conse- 
quences. For  present  politics  that  is  the  outstand- 
ing value  of  the  study  of  past  politics.  That  there 
may  be  historical  analogies  with  existing  problems 
is  of  importance  secondary  only  :  historical  parallels 
are  seldom  exact,  seldom  complete  :  historical  ana- 
logy is  to  be  used  with  caution  ;  and  the  detection 
of  differences  —  the  faculty  of  discrimmation  —  is 
more  profitable  than  the  capacity  to  discover,  and 
ingenuity  in  devising,  simiUtude. 

Yet  much  of  the  present  meets  us  in  the  past. 
Two  hundred  years  ago  England  had  her  education 
question  —  her  ecclesiastico  -  educational  question. 
It  was  deemed  a  grievance  by  Churchmen,  as  the 
Bishop  of  London  remarked  in  debate  in  the  House 
of  Lords  on  the  Schism  Bill,  that  their  children  were 


126      STUDIES  m  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITIOS 

sometimes  induced  to  attend  the  seminaries  of 
Nonconformists.  *  The  Lord  Halifax  answered,'  in 
the  words  of  the  Parliamentary  History,  '  that  what 
they  did  was  with  the  knowledge  and  consent  of 
their  parents,  who,  in  many  places,  had  not  suffi- 
cient means  to  educate  their  own  children  :  for 
which  reason  he  moved,  That  since  this  bill  was 
occasioned,  as  was  suggested,  by  the  dissenters 
endeavouring  to  ingross  the  education  of  the  youth 
of  both  persuasions,  they  might  be  allowed  schools 
to  instruct  their  own  children.  This  motion,  being 
formed  into  a  question,  was  debated  near  three 
hours.  The  lords  Cowper  and  Halifax,  the  earl  of 
Sunderland,  and  some  other  peers,  made  several 
speeches  for  the  affirmative.  But  the  lord  Boling- 
broke,  the  earl  of  Abingdon,  and  the  lord  chancellor, 
insisted  on  the  negative,  which  was  at  last  carried 
by  62  votes  against  48  ' — ^by  a  majority  equal  to  the 
number  of  peers  whom  party  interests  and  some 
poUtical  necessity  had  impelled  the  Tory-AngUcan 
ministry  to  induce  the  queen  to  create  at  one 
stroke.  But  by  Committee  amendments  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  as  against  the  general  proposal 
that  teachers  be  licensed  by  a  bishop,  it  was  agreed 
(1)  that  Dissenters  might  at  least  be  suffered  to 
have  schoolmistresses  to  teach  their  children  to 
read ;  and  (2)  that  the  Act  was  not  to  extend  tOi 
any  person  who  should  instruct  the  yoimg  in  read-  • 
ing,   writing,   arithmetic,   or  any   part   of   mathe- 


POLITICS   AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


127 


matical  learning  that  relates  to  navigation  or  any 
mechanical  art  only.i^    when,  in  1719,  the  Whig 
and    Nonconformist    '  BiU    for    strengthening    the 
Protestant  Interest '  ousted  from  its  place  this  Act 
*to  prevent  the  growth  of  Schism,   and  for  the 
public  security  of  the  Church  of  England  as  by  law 
estabUshed,'  it  was  argued  that  the  Act  repealing 
the  latter  '  restores  parents  to  their  natural  rights.'  ^^ 
Or,  again:   in  the   King's  Speech  opening   the 
session  in  the  first  year  of  the  mmistry  of  Walpole, 
it  was  claimed  that  nothing  would  more  conduce 
to   the  extension   of   British   commerce   *  than  to 
make  the  exportation  of  our  own  manufactures, 
and  the  importation  of  the  commodities  used  in 
the  manufacturing  of  them,  as  practicable  and  easy 
as  may  be  ;  by  this  means,  the  balance  of  trade 
may  be  preserved  in  our  favour,  our  navigation 
increased,  and  greater  numbers  of  our  poor  em- 
ployed.'    Further,  the  importation  of  naval  stores 
from  the  British  colonies  in  America  was  to  be 
encouraged,  with  these  objects  as  declared  in  the 
King's  Speech  :  to  give  a  preference  to  these  British 
settlements  over  foreign  countries,  and  *  by  employ- 
ing our  own  colonies  in  this  useful  and  advantageous 
service,  divert  them  from  setting  up  and  carrying 
on  manufactures  which  directly  interfere  with  those 
of  Great  Britain.'  i* 

Or,   yet  again,  from  the  past  for  the  present 
we  might  take  the  American  Question— the  most 


128      STtTDlES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

important  problem  in  the  history  of  modern  Britain 
for  the  British  people  to-day.     Conditions,  partly 
economic  and  constitutional,  gave  rise  to  a  new 
problem  in  the  statesmanship  of  Empire  or  of  a 
Greater  Britain,  or  broadened  the  character  of  a 
problem  that  was  old.     There  was  no  considered 
poUcy  at  home  in  response  to  the  demands  of  the 
new  situation.     The  loss  of  the  colonies  was  not 
'  inevitable,'  but  it  was  assured,  partly  by  want  of 
prevision — lack  of  the  higher  statesmanship — before 
the  year  of  the  Stamp  Act  and  even  (it  needs  to  be 
urged)  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war  with  France 
in  1756,  but  largely  and  immediately  by  want  of 
plan   in   poHcy — by   lack   of   discerning,   practical 
statesmanship — during  the  long  period  of  ten  years 
which  elapsed,  in  a  continuous  war  of  words,  between 
the  passing  of  the  Stamp  Act  and  the  firing  of  the 
shot  heard  round  the  world.     Even  in  1776,  with 
its  July  the  Fourth  of  sad  or  of  glorious  memory, 
there  was  only  a  slender  majority  of  the  colonists, 
if  a  majority  at  all,  for  Independence  and  extreme 
measures,    and    after    careful    investigation    it    is 
accepted  that  the  Loyalists  had  a  majority  of  the 
wealthier  commercial  men  and  of  the  professional 
and  cultured  classes.     Thorough   consideration   of 
a  problem  like  this  raises  us  far  above  the  politics 
of  party,  leads  to  the  trial  and  condemnation  of  thet 
politics  of  party  on  a  question  for  which  the  parties 
were  not  constituted,  and  makes  us  realise  the  force 


POLITICS  AS   A  PRACTICAL   STFDY 


129 


of  the  charge  preferred  by  Edmund  Burke:  *I 
think  I  can  trace  all  the  calamities  of  this  country 
to  the  single  source  of  our  not  having  had  steadily 
before  our  eyes  a  general,  comprehensive,  well- 
connected  and  well-proportioned  view  of  the  whole 
of  our  dominions,  and  a  just  sense  of  their  true 
bearings  and  relations.'  If  we  of  to-day  study  that 
problem,  not  in  Mr.  Lecky's  work  only  and  in  other 
works  still  more  recent,  nor  in  Burke  and  Adam 
Smith  only  (of  high  value,  as  secondary  rather  than 
primary  authorities,  though  these  are),  but  especially 
in  the  words  and  deeds  of  the  men  who  had  influence 
— primary  movers  and  authorities  like  James  Otis 
and  Thomas  Hutchinson,  Samuel  Adams  and  John 
Adams,  Thomas  PownaU  and  Joseph  Galloway,  as 
well  as  Grenville  and  Franklin,  George  m.,  North 
and  Chatham — and  if  we  were  to  examine  the 
situation  historically,  in  its  steps  and  many  changes, 
we  should  come  to  see  the  value  of  the  right  moment 
in  policy,  the  insidious  career  of  suspicion  in  politics 
— ^not  least  among  kinsmen — the  peril  from  in- 
opportune claims  to  superiority  and  from  national 
sentiment  repressed  and  political  hopes  disap- 
pointed :  how  important  is  the  economic  motive 
in  politics,  and  yet  how,  especially  at  great  crises, 
it  is  of  politics  only  a  part,  and  that  part  not 
supreme. 


Much   we  learn,   even   for  definite   application, 

I 


130      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

from  past  politics  ;  much  also  from  thought — the 
thought  of  '  the  thinkers  ' — on  politics.  If  we  were 
to  confine  ourselves  to  recent  thought  and  the 
thought  of  to-day,  the  first  place  would  be  assigned 
to  the  study  of  books  on  the  administration  of 
leading  States  and  of  the  colonies  and  dependencies 
of  those  States,  and,  in  conjunction  with  the  history 
of  the  last  century  and  a  half,  to  works  on  economics, 
since  no  poUtician  is  now  prepared  to  allege  with 
Charles  James  Fox  that  PoHtical  Economy  was 
one  of  the  dodges  of  WiUiam  Pitt.  But  for  the 
wider  range  of  politics  which  we  have  been  con- 
sidering the  scientific  mind  imperiously  demands 
the  best  of  all  the  ages,  and,  it  is  to  be  feared,  some- 
times identifies  the  best  with  the  most  difficult. 
It  is  a  great  study — ^the  study  of  the  thought  of 
able  and  earnest  thinkers  brought  to  bear  on  the 
agencies  and  methods  of  men  for  the  attainment 
and  furtherance  of  the  highest  human  good. 

There  are  some  tests  and,  it  may  be,  some  needed 
precautions  in  the  study.  We  ask  of  a  writer  :  Is 
he  mainly  deductive  and,  as  we  loosely  say,  theo- 
retical and  'philosophical,'  like  Plato  in  large 
part,  or  mainly  practical  and,  as  we  loosely  say, 
*  political,'  as,  in  different  degrees,  Montesquieu 
and  de  Tocqueville,  Alexander  Hamilton,  Machia- 
velli  ?  What  are  the  antecedent  influences  ^  on 
the  thought  of  the  writer,  and  what  are  the  con- 
temporary influences,  aptitudes  and  preferences  ? 


POLITICS   AS   A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


131 


What  are  the  historical  circumstances — the  actual 
conditions  in  the  life  and  poUtics  of  the  time— and 
how  far  are  they  reflected  in  the  thought  of  the 
writer,  and  how  far  accountable  for  his  thought  ? 
What  relation  has  dominant  poUtical  thought, 
or  the  best  political  thought,  in  an  age  to  action 
adopted,  policy  enforced  ?  In  MarsiKus  of  Padua 
of  the  fourteenth  century  there  is  almost  the  same 
conception  of  a  law-making  authority  as  in  John 
Locke  of  the  seventeenth  century,  but  in  the  equity 
of  criticism  we  do  not  apply  the  same  standard 
and  tests  to  the  Defensor  Pacts  as  to  the  Civil 
Government,  There  is  much  in  the  best  thought 
on  politics  that  is  relevant  only  to  the  time  when 
it  was  expressed  ;  much  also  there  is  that  is  funda- 
mental and  for  all  time.  Ideals  endure,  and  lessons 
from  failure  are  fruitful ;  and,  while  very  much  of 
Aristotle's  Politics  is  for  the  poHtics  of  the  ancient 
City-State  only,  his  teaching  on  democracy  may 
have  to  be  widely  revived  for  the  guidance — ^the 
control  and  the  security — of  the  democracies  of 
our  own  day. 

Again,  a  writer's  power  of  mind,  especially  his 
sagacity,  is  often  brought  out  more  in  his  reserva- 
tions and  in  his  statements  by  the  way  than  in  his 
main  thesis  or  general  theory  :  in  his  general  theory, 
and  in  the  form  in  which  he  clothes  and  presents 
his  thoughts,  he  may  be  the  servant,  whether  ready 
or  unwilling,  and  the  victim  of  his  age,  as  in  the 


132      STTTDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

encumbering  effect  on  some  minds  of  doctrines  of 
'natural  rights/  and  of  the  'origins'  of  society, 
and  of  a  '  contract '  in  government.     Rousseau  did 
not  say— or  did  not  say  only—*  it  may  be  neces- 
sary to  force  men  to  be  free ' :  he  at  once  added, 
*  I  mean  free  as  in  the  civil  State.'  ^^     Rousseau, 
in  his  main  reasoning  in  the  Social  Contract,  was 
not  writing  of  all  States  :    he  reasoned  from  and 
he  required  a  small  community,  a  well-instructed, 
enlightened  commimity,  and,  with  wise  precaution, 
he  himself  said,  that  the  supreme  difficulty  was 
that  of  instituting  (rather  than  that  of  maintaining) 
the  *  general  wiU  '—the  sensus  communis  informed 
by  Reason— because  the  social  sphit  which   was 
looked  for  as  the  work— the  result— of  the  institution 
would  itself  have  to  preside  over,  and  give  character 
and  direction  to,  the  institution :   men  previously 
to  the  right  laws  or  right  government  should  in 
disposition  be  what  they  were  to  become  by  means 
of  these ;    for,  were  it  not  so,  they  might  not  re- 
cognise and  accept  the  beneficence  of  the  institution, 
the  righteousness  of  the  new  order.     Were  all  else 
in  the  Social  Contract  to  be  permitted  to  perish, 
its  author's  testimony   to   the  poHtical  value   of 
public   opmion  deserves   to  be  imperishable:   the 
chief  guide  to  the  legislator,  he  tells  us,  in  words 
that  link  him  with  Montesquieu  and  de  Tocqueville, 
even  while  he  is  of  true  kin  to  neither,  is  found  in  the 
manners  and  customs  of  the  people,  and  above  all  id 


POLITICS   AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


133 


j^ 


pubUc  opinion — '  a  guide  unknown  to  our  politicians, 
but  one  on  which  the  success  of  everything  depends, 
that  which  creates  the  real  constitution  of  the  State, 
that  which  keeps  a  people  in  sympathy  with  their 
institutions  and  imperceptibly  substitutes  the  force 
of  habit  for  that  of  authority.'  ^^  An  utterance 
like  this  requires  to  be  adduced  in  justice  to  Rousseau, 
and  must  be  reckoned  with,  when  charges  are  made 
that  as  a  poUtical  thinker  he  was  merely  a  visionary 
and  purblind.  Moreover,  the  author  of  the  idealistic 
Social  Contract  was  author  also  of  the  expedient 
Government  of  Poland,^'' 

Similarly,  Harrington  in  his  Oceana  is  not  the 
mere  dreamer  he  has  seemed  to  many,  or  by  many 
been  assumed,  to  be — Harrington,  who  thought 
that  Machiavelli's  books  were  unduly  *  neglected,' 
who  praised,  as  others  have  praised,  Machiavelli's 
book  on  the  Art  of  War,  and  said  that  *he  that 
will  erect  a  Commonwealth  against  the  judgment 
of  MachiaveUi  is  obliged  to  give  such  reasons  for 
his  enterprize  as  shall  not  go  a-begging.'  ^®  A 
republican,  Harrington  laid  down  forcibly  the 
danger  from  the  tyranny  of  majorities ;  and  in  his 
reasoning  (or  phantasy)  he  had  as  central  argument 
a  thought  of  profound  significance,  one  which 
economists  and  pohticians  may  duly  appreciate — 
that  dominion  or  power  in  poHtics  tends  to  follow 
the  balance  of  property,  so  that  (it  may  be  con- 
tended) the  politics  of  Puritan  republicans  failed, 


134      STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  mSTORY  AND  POLITICS 

since  the  economics  of  the  Puritans  and  of  English- 
men could  not  be  sufficiently  democratic  for  their 
politics  to  succeed. 

Agam,  in  the  history  of  though1>— it  is  a  truism, 
but  apt  to  be  ignored— we  are  dealing  with  mind — 
a  complex  structure — with  type  of  mind,  and,  it 
may  be,  with  several  types,  or  elements  contending 
for  mastery,  in  one  thinker.  That  has  already 
been  unpHed  of  Aristotle.  But  do  we  adequately 
consider  that  a  favourite  author  of  Machiavelli, 
with  his  idealism  and  mysticism  as  well  as  state- 
craft, was  Dante  ;  that  one  of  Spinoza's  masters  in 
poUtics,  and  perhaps  the  chief  poUtical  influence 
upon  him,  was  MachiaveUi ;  and  that  Rousseau 
said  that  The  Prince  of  Machiavelli  is  a  manual  of 
republicanism  ? 

In  general,  we  should  never  suppose,  as  was  said 
by  Coleridge,  that  we  understand  a  man's  ignorance 
until  we  are  sure  that  we  are  not  ignorant  of  his 
understanding.    There   is,   too,   a  final  particular 
precaution  in  the  study  of  thought  on  politics: 
the  point  and  force  of  application  of  a  theory  or 
a  body  of  thought  may  undergo  change— may  even 
tend  to  defeat  the  purpose  of  the  authority  to  whom 
appeal  is  made.     Take  a  present-day  illustration. 
Benthamism   was   mtended   to   define   and   fortify 
Liberalism,  and  Bentham  held  that,   in  principle 
and  as  the  rule,  govemmeni^-intervention  by  the 
State — is  an  evil :    government  should  *  stand  out 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


135 


of  the  sunshine '  of  industry,  and  in  its  incidence  on 
life  and  conduct  should  be  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
But  Bentham  was  also  an  advocate  of  the  sovereignty 
of  Parhament,  and  of  a  very  wide  franchise,  and  of 
measures  of  much -required  legal  reform.    There  is 
no  essential  logical  connection  between  the  greatest 
happiness  principle  and  advocacy  of  the  minimum 
sphere  of  government,  and  in  historical  fact,  since 
Bentham's    day    and    the    day    of    the    exuberant 
LiberaUsm  of  1832,  it  is  to  the  exercise  of  authority 
— to  the  use  of  the  power  of  the  State — ^that  social 
reformers   have   had  to  look  in  promoting  their 
measures.     There  was,  in  fact,  a  despotic  element  ^® 
in  Benthamism — in  Benthamite  LiberaHsm  poHti- 
cally  appUed.     The  school  of  the  minimum  function 
of  government  lost  supporters  and  in  its  natural 
aUies  lost  them  :    the  utility  principle  seemed  to 
require,   in  practice  and   for  effectiveness,   rather 
State  power  than  loyalty  to  the  principle  of  indivi- 
dual freedom  ;  since  1832  the  machine  of  adminis- 
tration in  Britain,  so  sternly  and,  for  his  own  day, 
with  much    justification   denounced  by  Bentham, 
has  been  made  both  more  complex  and  more  suited 
to  its  work  ;   and  the  driving  force  has  been  trans- 
ferred to  the  bulk  of  the  people — the  wage-earners 
of  the  country — under  the  rule  of  majorities — to 
elements  of  the  body  poUtic  that  appraise  constitu- 
tional forms  and  poUtical  rights,   and  are  being 
taught   and   induced   to    appraise    them,   only   as 


136      STUDIES  m   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

opportunities    for    modifying    and    re-casting    the 
economic  and  social  body. 

Is  it  possible,  in  but  few  words,  to  express  part  of 
the  essential  wisdom  of  the  past  for  the  present 
in  politics  1  The  book  of  the  life  of  peoples  must 
be  written  before  the  table  of  their  public  law  can 
be  drawn  up,  and  in  both  the  West  and  the  East 
men  may  still  have  to  pass  through  'varieties  of 
untried  being.'     But  a  legacy  in  politics  there  is 

from  the  past. 

A  constitution  is  not  an  end  in  itself  and  is  not 
to  be  judged  by  its  nearness  to  a  theoretical  per- 
fection :  it  is  tested  by  work— by  its  capacity  to  do 
work  or  to  permit  work  to  be  done,  and  by  its 
suitabihty  to  social  conditions  and  by  the  readiness 
and  safety  by  which  it  can  be  adapted  to  change  in 

conditions. 

The  State  viewed  as  government  embodies  the 
idea  of  authority,  and  as  such  is  predisposed  in 
favour  of  mechanism  and  routine :  the  nation — a 
people— embodies  the  idea  of  energies,  of  life  and 
movement,  and  is  predisposed  in  favour  of  Hberty. 

Liberty,  in  politics,  is  relative,  not  absolute,  and 
must  be  conceived  in  relation  to  authority — may 
have  to  be  expressed,  and  may  best  be  defined,  in 
terms  of  authority.  The  amount  of  liberty  which 
a  nation  can  bear,  with  the  maimer  of  bearing  it, 
is  one  of  the  tests  of  a  people  and  of  statesmanship. 


POLITICS   AS   A  PRACTICAL   STUDY 


137 


*  Power  checks  power  ' — ^Montesquieu's  fertile 
maxim  :  ^  democracy,  as  a  form  of  government, 
admits,  in  the  practice  of  rule,  no  surrender  nor 
claim  of  authority  as  against  itself  :  democracy 
in  practice  makes  for  the  organisation  and  con- 
centration of  power  in  favour  of  those  who  by 
numbers  can  command  :  liberty  requires  a  division 
and  distribution  of  power  in  accordance  with  rights 
possessed  and  possessions  to  be  protected.  Tyranny 
is  not  to  be  justified  by  the  mere  holding  of  the  power, 
whether  the  holders  be  one,  be  few,  or  be  many  : 
especially  where  the  many  hold  sway,  the  rights 
of  minorities  have  to  be  protected  :  especially  in 
a  democracy,  above  rights  have  to  be  set  duties : 
will  and  power  are  not  to  be  set  above  right  and 
justice. 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND 

*  Did  the  reader  ever  meet  with  a  book  intituled 
"  Origines  Literariae  ;  or  a  Treatise  on  the  causes  of 
Books,  wherein  is,  by  occasion,  somewhat  touched 
the  effect  which  such  groimds  and  causes  have  had 
on  the  frame  and  tenor  of  the  works  themselves  "  ? 
I  never  did ;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  there  ever 
was  such  a  thing  ;  but  I  have  often  wished  that 
there  had  been.  It  would  be  a  most  curious  and 
valuable  addition  to  Hterary  history.'  ^ 

The  appeal  made  by  these  words  of  Samuel  Roffey 
Maitland  is  an  embarrassing  one ;  but  they  are 
words  that  may  fittingly  introduce  an  attempt  to 
record  the  work  of  his  grandson,  the  late  Frederic 
William  Maitland,  and  to  show  reasons  for  gratitude 
for  what  has  been  done  by  him  for  the  study  of 
history  and  for  the  history  of  law  and  political 
thought. 

In  the  year  1884  Bishop  Stubbs  gave  his  last 
statutory  pubUc  lecture  ^  as  Regius  Professor  of 
History  at  Oxford  :  in  the  same  year  Mr.  F.  W. 
Maitland  pubUshed  his  first  book,  and  delivered 
his  first  lecture  as  Reader  in  English  Law  at  Cam- 
bridge.    Maitland    was    then    thirty-four   years    of 

188 


FREDERIC   WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


139 


age.     He  had  been  Whewell  Scholar  at  Cambridge, 
and  had  written  a  dissertation  on  EngUsh  poUtical 
thought  from  Hobbes  to  Locke.    He  was  not  suc- 
cessful in  obtaining  a  FeUowship,  and,  having  left 
Cambridge   and   become   a   barrister,    he   devoted 
time,   which   his   profession   allowed   him,    to   the 
prosecution  of  historical  study  and  the  study  of 
legal  history.     Maitland  has  himself  told  us  that 
he  found  Sttibhs  in  a  London  club,  and  read  it 
'because   it   was  interestmg '  :    later,   there  were 
'battered   and  backless'    volumes   that  reminded 
him  of  *  happy  hours  and  heavy  debts.'  ^    In  pro- 
viding for  the  return  of  Maitland,  through  the  insti- 
tution of  the  Readership,  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick 
was  recalling  to  Cambridge  one  who  was  to  be 
Stubbs's  only  worthy  immediate  successor  in  this 
country   in   the  investigation  of  the  problems  of 
medieval  England,  and  (it  may  at  once  be  said) 
one  who  was  to  become  the  mterrogator  and  sup- 
planter  of  Stubbs  in  respect  of  some  of  the  most 
difficult  of  them.     In   1888  Maitland  was  elected 
to  the  Downing  Professorship  of  the  Laws  of  Eng- 
land   in    the    University    of    Cambridge.    When, 
forced  away  from  England,  he  died  in  December 
1906  at  the  age  of  fifty-six  he  was  not  known  to  a 
wide  pubUc.     But  that  may  be  said  of  him  which 
was  written  of  Selden  by  a  contemporary  :  *  '  He  is 
honourably  mentioned  by  many  outlandish  men ' ; 
and  on  each  of  his  books  we  may  write  Selden's 


140      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITIOS 

own  motto,  Trepl  wavro^  rfiv  eXevOepLav,  '  to  show 
that  he  would  examine  things  and  not  take  them 
upon  trust.'  Nor  does  any  student  of  institutional 
history  need  to  be  reminded  of  the  nature  of  the 
appeal  made  in  a  memorable  Preface — that  not 
without  an  effort  can  the  history  of  institutions 
be  mastered,  or  even  approached,  and  that  such 
study  is  not  for  the  mind  that  needs  to  be  tempted 
by  the  romantic  and  the  picturesque  to  the  investiga- 
tion of  Truth.5 

About  the  year  1884  it  seemed  likely  that 
England  was  to  be  deprived  of,  or  was  not  to  be 
allowed,  pre-eminence  in  the  study  of  her  own 
legal  history.  The  attack  was  being  made  from 
different  quarters :  Germany  had  claimed  the 
study  of  Anglo-Saxon  laws,  and  the  claim  has  not 
been  very  seriously  contested  ;  in  Essays  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  Law,  and  in  Mr.  MelviUe  Bigelow's  Placita 
Anglo- Normannica,  a  collection  of  law  cases  from 
William  i.  to  Richard  i.,  and  in  his  History  of  Pro- 
cedure in  England,  1066-1204,  the  United  States 
of  America  had  given  proof  of  an  aptitude  and  a 
vigour  that  are  found  matured  at  Harvard  to-day  ; 
and  in  Professor  Paul  Vinogradoff,  then  of  the 
Chair  of  History  in  the  University  of  Moscow,  but 
since,  in  rightful  adjustment,  annexed  by  England, 
Russia  had  a  scholar  of  initiative  and  distinction 
who  was  engaged  on  the  essential  and  fruitful  study 
of  the  interdependences  of  law  and  economic  fact 


FREDERIC   WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


141 


during  and  before  the  age  of  Bracton.     England, 
it  might  well  have  seemed,  was  to  be  denied  her 
own  in  her  own  heritage.     But  there  were  signs 
of  strength   and  of  self-assertion  and  of  method 
in  applying  resources— even  of  method— in  England 
herself.     It  was  about  1884  that  the  fuU  effect  of 
Stubbs's  teaching  was  being  felt ;    and  more  than 
Maitland  were  discovering  that  their  Stvbhs  was 
exceptionally    *  weU-documented '— that    it    was    a 
treasure  which,  largely  by  its  own  Hberal  provision, 
they  might  expand,  or,  rather,  parts  of  which  they 
might  themselves  make  more  secure  by  assisting 
in  an  intensive  pursuit  of  the  '  attainable  maxunum 
of  truth.'     No  one  could  have  been  more  cordial 
than  was  Stubbs  in  1884  in  his  welcome  of  fellow- 
workers.     Besides,  two  definite  grounds  for  hope- 
fulness there  were  :    the  early  economic  history  of 
England   had   begun   to   demand   and   compel   its 
votaries,    and    Mr.    Frederick    Seebohm's    English 
Village  Community  had  appUed  a  method  «  as  well 
as  sought  to  estabHsh  conclusions  ;   and,  secondly, 
Mr.  (now  Sir)  Frederick  Pollock  '  had  been  insisting 
on  the  importance  of  the  study  of  EngUsh  legal 
history    for    the    understanding    of    past    English 
pontics  ;    he  had  been  emphasising  the  vastness  of 
our  opportunities  and  the  grossness  of  our  neglect, 
and  he  wa«  himself  interested,  in  almost  equaUy 
generous   measure,   in   the   economic   structure  of 
early  and  medieval  English  society  and  m  its  legal 


142      STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

instruments  and  equipment.  Readers  of  the  Note- 
Book  ®  may  remember  that  it  was  from  Sir  Frederick 
Pollock  that  there  first  came  to  Maitland  an  interest 
in  the  history  of  law. 

The  history  of  English  law  was  Maitland's  study 
during  the  whole  of  his  life  of  public  activity,  and 
his  association  with  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  resulted 
in  one  of  the  few  unquestionable  triumphs  of  British 
historical  scholarship  during  the  past  generation. 
The  History  of  English  Law  before  the  Time  of 
Edward  I.  was  published  in  1895.  Maitland  had 
then  been  an  author  for  eleven  years  :  he  had  a 
second  period  of  eleven  years  of  research  and  author- 
ship. Throughout  at  least  these  twenty-two  years 
— in  the  period  succeeding  the  publication  of  the 
great  work  of  1895,  not  less  than  before — Maitland 
was  held  by  his  subject.  It  gives  us  the  centre  and 
almost  the  circumference  of  his  life ;  the  problem 
of  origins,  of  *  Origines  LiterariaB,'  is  to  this  extent 
not  a  difficult  one.  Maitland  had  many  interests, 
but,  with  the  exception  of  his  Life  and  Letters  of 
Leslie  Stephen,  practically  none  of  his  writings — 
whether  elaborate  treatise  or  learned  essay,  help- 
ful introduction  to  a  text,  suggestive  article,  or 
concise  review — was  without  bearing  on  his  central 
object  and  achievement.  It  was  a  student's  life 
in  unitate  concordiae. 

In  his  first  work — Pleas  of  the  Crown  for  the 
County  of  GUmcester  (for  1221),  published  in  1884, 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


143 


and   dedicated   to   Professor   Vinogradoff — we   see 
already  a  developed  interest  in  Bracton  and  a  rising 
interest  in  Azo  (though  he  was  not  yet  equipped  to 
repel  the  *  stupendous  exaggeration  '  against  Bracton 
in  Ancient  Law^),  but,  especially,  we  see  already 
his  faith  in  the  importance  of  cases  for  the  picture 
of  medieval  life  they  give,  and  for  the  light  they 
throw  on  the  organs  of  a  section  of  the  body  politic  ; 
and,  in  implying  that  much  of  what  is  of  interest  to 
the  student  of  the  history  of  English  law  must  be 
of  interest  to  the  student  of  English  history  also, 
he  was  already  taking  up  a  position  in  regard  to 
both  history  and  law  that  was  consistently,  during 
twenty-two  years,  upheld  by  him.     In   1887  ap- 
peared Bractan's  Note-Book  (in  three  volumes,  two 
of  them  of  text) :   A  Collection  of  Cases  .  .  .  anno- 
tated .  .  .  seemingly   by  Henry   of  Bratton,     (*  We 
will  call  him  Bracton,'  writes  Maitland  in  1895,^® 
*  but  in   a   hundred   contemporary  records   he  is 
Henry  of  Bratton  or  Bretton,  and  the  corruption 
of  his  name  seems  to  be  due  to  scribes  who  copied 
his    treatise    after    his    death.')     Bracton' 8    Note- 
Book  is  one  of  the  works  on  which  rests  the  title  of 
Maitland  to  distinction.     It  is  right,  however,  that 
we  should  recall  that  which  Maitland  himself  made 
very  clear  at  the  time  ^^ — ^that  the  discovery  among 
the  British  Museum  MSS.,  which  led  to  the  idea  of 
connecting  these  cases  with  the  material  in  judicial 
practice  on  which  Bracton  based  his  great  work, 


144      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

De  Legibus,  was  Professor  Vinogradoff's  discovery 
(in  the  year  of  Maitland's  first  book).  But  the 
work  of  close  investigation,  of  elucidation  and  in- 
terpretation, was  Maitland's  own.  Moreover,  it  was 
wholly  his  own  enterprise,  although  it  was  wholly 
appropriate  to  a  Society's  initiation  and  support, 
or  to  State  encouragement  and  recognition,  even  in 
Britain.  *  Perhaps  I  was  not  the  man  for  the  work ; 
but  I  have  liked  it  well '  :  ^^  there  is  much  of 
Maitland  in  these  words.  The  work  had  brought 
him  into  intimate  and  extended  touch  with  the 
Middle  Age  at  an  era  important  in  the  outward 
conditions  and  relationships  of  life  and  in  the  growth 
of  law  and  pohtical  thought.  Maitland's  best  on 
Bracton  had  still  to  come,  but  there  are  twelve 
pages  in  the  Introduction  that  show  the  qualities 
that  mark  him  at  his  best.  With  this  book  his 
term  of  probation  came  to  an  end.  In  commenting 
on  the  influence  of  the  Note-Booh,  through  Fitz- 
herbert,  on  Coke,  he  cannot  restrain  himself  from 
assuring  us  that  the  history  of  Enghsh  law  will 
some  day  be  written ;  ^^  and  in  1888,  in  his  in- 
augural lecture  as  Downing  Professor,  he  put  the 
question,  *  Why  the  history  of  English  law  has  not 
been  written.' 

Already  in  1887  definite  action  had  been  taken 
by  a  few  of  the  learned  in  the  cause  of  their  learning  : 
the  Selden  Society  was  founded.  It  was  founded 
*  to  encourage  the  study  and  advance  the  knowledge 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


145 


of  the  history  of  English  law,'  and  to  do  this  by  the 
publication  of  original  documents  and  the  reprint- 
ing and  editing  of  works  of  historical  value  for  its 
study.  It  may  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  this 
has  been  Maitland's  Society.  Not  only  was  he  one 
of  the  twelve  to  whom  its  foundation  was  due,  but 
he  has  himself  done  about  one-third  of  the  actual 
research  and  writing  set  forth  in  the  society's  yearly 
pubUcations,  and  as  Literary  Director  he  has  in- 
formed, inspired  and  encouraged  other  contributors 
in  their  undertakings.  In  the  history  of  the  study 
of  legal  and  institutional  development  in  England 
the  year  1887  holds  the  place  held  by  the  year  1857 
in  the  history  of  historical  study  in  general  in  this 
country  ;  and  the  work  of  Stubbs  in  his  Rolls 
Series  Introductions  has  its  parallel  in  the  work  of 
Maitland  in  his  Introductions  to  the  Selden  Society 
volumes.  The  magnificent  and  wonder-working 
activity  of  Stubbs  during  the  ten  years  1866-76  is 
almost  equalled  by  that  of  Maitland  during  the  ten 
years  1888-98.  We  do  not  think  of  Stubbs  and  of 
the  author  of  the  Constitutional  History  and  the 
Select  Charters  as  an  identity  ;  nor  thus  of  Maitland 
and  the  authorship  of  the  History  of  English  Law 
and  Domesday  Book.  The  official  injunction  or  re- 
commendation in  the  matter  of  Introductions  was 
interpreted  by  Stubbs  (all  must  concede)  rather  in 
the  broad  spirit  of  the  historian  than  in  the  strict 
letter  of  the  law  ;   and  there  is  much  in  these  Rolls 


146      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTOBY   AND   POUTICS 

Series  Introductions  by  Stubbs  that  is  unsurpassed 
in   England  for  historical  learning   and  historical 
writing.     There  seemed  danger  at  first  ^^  of  Mait- 
land  taking  a  narrow  view  of  the  Introduction— a 
lawyerly  interpretation  merely— not  the  historian's, 
not  his  own.     The  Introduction  to  Select  Pleas  of 
the   Crown    (1200-1225)— the   first   volume   of   the 
Society    (pubHshed    1888,  'for   the  year    1887')— 
gives  the  historical  settmg  :  it  mforms  and  explains, 
is  compact  and  helpful ;    but  in  its  brief  twenty- 
four  pages  it  lacks  the  sweep  that  Maitland  sought 
and  requu-ed  for  the  display  of  his  knowledge  of 
an  age,  and  for  the  exercise  of  his  genius  in  style  ; 
and  the  notes,  too  (he  trusted  they  were  not  *  im- 
pertinences '),  might  have  been  ampUfied.     A  Hberal 
interpretation,  however,  prevailed.     There  resulted 
dissertations   Uke   Maitland's    own,    in   succeeding 
volumes,  and  like  that  of  Mr.  Leadam  on  the  Star 
Chamber— substantial  and  authoritative  additions 
to  historical  knowledge. 

It  was  one  of  the  hopes  of  the  founders  of  the 
Society  that  by  the  pubUcation  of  the  records  of 
Courts  and  of  other  collections  we  should  come 
to  a  better  understanding  of  the  economic  con- 
dition and  social  life  of  England  in  the  Middle 
Age.  From  the  records  much  could  be  drawn 
that  bore  on  the  service  and  status  of  tenants  in 
villeinage,  on  feudal  tenures,  on  borough  customs, 
as  weU  as  on  the  powers  of  justices  and  others,  and 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM   MAITLAND 


147 


on  the  growth  of  forms  at  law.  No  allowance  is 
made  for  the  youth  of  the  Selden  Society  when 
it  is  said  that  this  expectation  has  already  been 
bounteously  fulfilled.  No  student  of  economic  con- 
ditions or  of  institutional  development,  no  student 
of  the  medieval  law  and  history  of  England,  can 
afford  to  neglect  either  the  first-hand  materials  or 
the  dissertations  provided  in  the  Society's  pubhca- 
tions.  Maitland's  zeal  in  his  work  for  the  Society 
— his  zeal  on  this  view  of  the  work  being  done — 
culminated  in  his  project  of  an  edition  of  the  Year 
Books  of  Edward  n.,  of  which  he  pubUshed  three 
volumes.  These  early  law  reports,  he  had  already 
written  in  a  well-known  passage,  *  should  be  our 
glory,  for  no  other  country  has  anything  hke  them  ; 
they  are  our  disgrace,  for  no  other  country  would 
have  so  neglected  them.'  ^^  Have  not  EngHsh 
lawyers  been  too  modest  in  respect  of  what  has 
been  done  by  the  science  and  the  art  of  law  in 
the  true  making  of  England  ?  Even  *  high  tech- 
nique '  has  had  its  part  in  that  development — the 
making  of  the  EngUshman.  Is  not  law  the  point 
where  '  Ufe  and  logic  '  meet  ?  ^^  And  some  day 
will  it  not  seem  strange  that  men  ever  thought 
they  could  command  a  knowledge  of  medieval 
England  and  write  its  history  without  using  and 
knowing  the  Year  Books  ?  Thus  Maitland  rea- 
soned, and  thus  contended.  We  may  deem  it  to 
have  been  a  State  concern  to  see  to  the  issue  of  the 


148      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

series  of  Year  Books  planned  by  Maitland,  instead 
of  the  heavy  burden  being  undertaken  by  a  Society 
and  by  its  leading  member.     Further,  with  Mait- 
land gone,  it  is  permissible  to  reflect  that  his  know- 
ledge might  have  been  even  more  fittmgly  applied, 
and  perhaps  with  less  expenditure  of  energy  during 
the  last  five  or  six  years,  to  the  editmg  of  one  or 
two  writers  and  writings,  such  as  the  Society  had 
in   contemplation.     Against   all   such    doubts   and 
reflections,  however,  must  be  set  the  character  of 
the  work  done  by  him  both  in  his  scrupulous  atten- 
tion to  his  texts  and  in  the  Introductions  of  rare 
value  which  he  wrote  to  the  first  and  third  volumes 
of  the  series.     Maitland  felt  that  this  work  on  these 
early  Year  Books  was  his  to  do  ;   by  doing  part  of 
it,  he  has  directed  how  what  remains  should  be 
done;    and   he   had   become   as   keenly   soUcitous 
for  the  highest  interpretation  of  EngUsh    history 
as  he  formerly  was  for  the  writing  of  the  history 
of  English  law.^' 

It  is  this  emphasised  connection  between  EngUsh 
law  and  English  history  that  is  the  general  merit 
of  the  History  of  English  Law  on  which  Maitland 
was  engaged  during  the  early  years  of  his  work  for 
the  Selden  Society.  Sir  Frederick  PoUock  made 
it  known  that  the  book  is  mainly  Maitland's.  The 
association  of  these  two  authorities  was,  indeed, 
natural,  happy  and  fruitful.  Estimated  by  its 
inherent  worth  and  by  its  residts,  the  book  takes 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


149 


rank  with  Stubbs's  Constitutional  History.  It  con- 
firms much,  and  it  supersedes  much,  in  that  great 
work.  The  best  part  of  the  book  is  probably  that 
which  treats  of  the  age  of  Bracton.  In  the  same 
year  as  the  book  appeared,  Maitland's  Bracton  and 
Azo  was  pubUshed  for  the  Selden  Society.  It  has 
been  said  of  Mommsen  that  his  monumental  History 
seems  almost  to  have  been  written  for  the  sake  of 
leading  up  to  Caesar  :  it  would  be  a  milder  calumny 
to  say  that  Maitland  valued  the  whole  range  of  his 
vast  subject  for  the  light  that  would  be  thrown  on 
the  'crown  and  flower  of  English  medieval  juris- 
prudence.* 1®  All  roads  did  not  lead  to  Bracton ; 
but  to  Bracton  we  are  very  surely  led.  There  is 
much  in  the  book  that  is  highly  technical ;  and  in 
one  of  the  latest  Selden  Introductions,  that  *  pray 
to  be  received,'  we  were  told  that  high  technique 
is  to  be  admired  at  all  times  and  in  all  places. 
There  is  much  that  is  luminous,  suggestive  and 
creative  by  reason  of  mastery  in  high  technique  : 
many  things  the  book  has  destroyed,  many  re- 
constructed— constructed  in  other  wise.  The  com- 
mand of  technique,  in  combination  with  skill  in 
exposition,  asserts  itself  in  the  treatment  of  such 
subjects  as  seisin,  knight  service,  and  the  place  of 
contract  in  feudal  society.  On  the  lowest  estimate 
the  book  has  been  of  value  in  revising  and  improving 
our  glossary  for  feudal  or  almost-feudal  England  ; 
but,  far  beyond  that,  it  is  to  be  esteemed  for  the 


150      STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITIOS 

fresh  setting  given  to  English  history  in  the  century 
(at  least)  immediately  preceding  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, and  in  the  two  centuries  immediately  suc- 
ceeding   that    '  catastrophe.'  ^^    For    this    critical 
period  of  English  medieval  history  the  book  was 
required  :    it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  there  will 
be  a  displacement  or  a  disturbance  of  Stuhhs  for 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  equal  to  that 
for  the  centuries  to  which  Domesday  Book  gives  a 
key,  and  from  which  its  own  key  must  be  sought.^® 
If  we  are  led  very  surely  to  Bracton,  and  if  our 
authors  seem  to  be  steeped  in  the  law  of  the  Angevin 
time,  we  must  not  charge  them  with  the  guilt  of 
false  perspective,  without  having  their  own  con- 
tentions  submitted,   and  without  being  ready  to 
rebut  them.     They  have  sought  to  come  to  know 
that  law  as  a  law  Hved  under,  and  to  know  it  not 
only  for  itseK,  but  as  that  from  which  they  can 
work  back  as  well  as  forward  to  the  law  of  other 
ages  :     *  Our  one   hope   of   interpreting   the  Leges 
Henrici,  that  almost  unique  memorial  of  the  really 
feudal  stage  of  legal  history,  our  one  hope  of  coercing 
Domesday  Book  to  deliver  up  its  hoarded  secrets, 
our  one  hope  of  making  our  Anglo-Saxon  land-book 
mean  something  definite,  seem  to  lie  in  an  effort 
to  understand  the  law  of  the  Angevin  time,   to 
understand  it  thoroughly,  as  though  we  ourselves 
had  lived  under  it.'  ^^ 

With  hardly  an  exception,  the  remaining  works 


FREDERIC   WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


161 


of  Maitland,  and  not  least  the  Selden  Introductions 
to  which  reference  has  been  made,  are  (we  may 
say)  satellites  of    the  History  of  English  Law,  if, 
indeed,  one  should  venture  to  say  of  any  writing 
by  Maitland  that  it  has  the  obsequiousness  of  a 
satellite,   even  when  he  is   merely   *  introducing ' 
a  foreign  thinker  whom  he  has  himself  translated. 
Of  more  than  one  of  these  works  he  has  himself 
told  us  that   something  only  partly  said    in    the 
History— the  deske  to  say  that  something  better — 
impelled  him  to  write  and  to  speak  out.    These 
were  his  excursions  and  incursions.    Thus,  Boman 
Canon  Law  in  the  Church  of  England  developed 
learning  and  an  interest  akeady  strongly  revealed 
in  the  discussion  of  the  CJonstitutions  of  Clarendon 
and  of  relative  questions  in  the  History.     Also — or, 
by   consequence — it  combated  fundamental  posi- 
tions advanced  by  Stubbs  in  his  valuable  historical 
Appendix  to  the  Report  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Courts 
Commission— an   Appendix   for   which   its   author 
claimed  in  1884  that  it  was  *  true  history '  as  well 
as    'the    result    of    hard    work.' 22    The    chapters 
omitted  by  ecclesiastical  historians  were  just  those 
Maitland  wanted.     His  own  surveys  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical jurisprudence  of  England  in  the  later  Middle 
Age — his  inquiry  into  conceptions  and  realities  of 
law  administered  in  English  Church  Courts  from 
the  Norman  Conquest  to  the  Reformation— gave 
to  his  conclusions  a  special  force  when  he  came  to 


152      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

the  cutting  of  'the  very  life-thread  of  the  old 
learning  '  23  by  Henry  vm.  and  to  the  beginning  of 
the  statutory  Reformation  in  England  with  an 
Act  2*  aimed  at  Canterbury,  not  at  Rome.  In  the 
Rede  lecture,  English  Law  and  the  Renaissance,  rich 
in  allusions  and  of  high  value  for  its  notes,  in  his 
Elizabethan  Gleanings,  and  in  his  chapter  in  the 
Cambridge  Modem  History  on  the  *  Anglican  Settle- 
ment,' he  further  applied  this  accumulation  of 
historical  interest  from  the  Middle  Age.  A  dis- 
senter from  all  churches,  he  had  no  prejudices; 
and,  like  one  or  two  of  the  great  medieval  minds 
in  politics,  he  has  known  how,  by  protest,  to  make 
progress  in  knowledge. 

In  Domesday  Book  and  Beyond  Maitland  has  given 
us  an  almost  necessary  supplement  to  the  History 
of  English  Law.  Its  author — an  excellent  spirit  in 
controversy — would  himself  have  constituted  Pro- 
fessor VinogradofiE  and  Mr.  Round  a  Supreme  Court, 
but,  although  some  of  its  central  conclusions  have 
been  questioned,  it  is  Maitland's  ablest — rather 
than  most  influential — piece  of  independent  work. 
It  embodies  much  of  the  learning  and  the  thought 
of  one  who,  for  a  number  of  years,  had  been  putting 
questions  regarding  the  relation  between  land  and 
military  service,  regarding  the  meaning  and  changes 
in  the  meaning  of  the  manor,  regarding  seignorial 
justice.  The  epithet  'brilliant'  seems  colourless 
as  applied  to  Maitland,  but  at  least  it  will  be  con- 


FREDERIC   WILLIAM   MAITLAND 


153 


ceded  by  all ;  and  of  Maitland's  works  his  Domesday 
Book  is  the  most  brilliant— the  most  brilliantly 
Maitland-like.  *  Brilliant '  may  mislead.  The  con- 
centration of  the  investigator  ;  command  of  method  ; 
zest  in  the  search— in  the  chase  (may  we  say  1), 
with  the  scent  difficult ;  skill  and  deUght  in  analysis  ; 
deUght  and  genius  in  the  resultmg,  though  merely 
tentative,  synthesis:  these  are  all  revealed  in 
Domesday  Book,  And  the  manner  in  which  they 
are  displayed  may  make  us  doubt  whether  the 
book  has  its  equal  in  the  English  language  for  the 
investigation  and  exposition  of  technical  problems 
of  the  most  difficult  character. 

It  is  not  easy  for  any  one  but  an  author  himself, 
and,  often,  even  for  him  not  easy,  to  tell  of  the 
growth  of  his  own  ideas  and  capacities — to  know 
the  history,  for  example,  of  the  growth  of  his 
historical  knowledge  and  historical  aptitudes.  In 
the  case  of  Maitland  it  is  less  difficult,  probably, 
than  in  the  case  of  others  of  wide  learning.  In 
his  later  years,  when  he  had  himself  much  to  give, 
it  is  probable  that  he  received  most  from  Professor 
Otto  Gierke.  On  this  account,  it  may  be,  the  wise 
counsel  of  Professor  Sidgwick^^  was  the  more 
readily  adopted  ;  and  the  result  was  not  only  the 
translation  of  a  part  of  Dr.  Gierke's  Das  deutsche 
Oenossenschaftsrecht,  but  its  introduction  to  English 
readers  by  means  of  a  disquisition  (it  is  hardly  the 
right  word  for  Maitland)  for  which  the  exponent 


fi 


154      STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

of  persona  ficta  in  the  History  was  himself  abeady 
in  large  degree  equipped,  but  the  quality  of  which 
was  an  increased  testimony  to  Maitland's  learning 
and  skill  in  the  realm  of  historical  thought  on  law 
and  poUtics.  Few  distinguished  foreign  scholars 
have  been  introduced  in  a  way  so  scholarly  and 
distinguished. 

Just  as  a  great  Power  has  *  no  Httle  wars,'  so  in 
history  we  do  not  nicely  discriminate  between  the 
petty  and  the  weighty  when  advances  are  being 
made  in  knowledge.  There  was  no  *  right  of 
appeal '  ^  to  Alfred  the  Great  (nor  was  the  year  of 
his  death  the  year  we  were  taught  at  school  2'). 
Professor  Vinogradoff  has  deprived  us  of  our  folk- 
land  :  ^®  he  has  interpreted  for  us  a  folk-right  that 
has  taken  from  the  folk  its  land.  The  England  of 
the  day  when  Edward  was  '  quick  and  dead '  is 
not  yet  fully  known,  but  is  better  known  now  than 
when  Mr.  Eyton  gave  his  '  key '  to  Domesday.^^ 
We  have  become  critical  and  suspecting  whenever 
numbers  face  us  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  especially 
intolerant  of  *  LX.  millia  ' :  we  no  longer  bring 
60,000  land-holding  men  to  Salisbury  Plain — ^no 
longer  transgress  with  Ordericus  VitaUs  and  with 
Mr.  Green's  trustful  legions :  ^®  the  number  of 
knights'  fees  in  England  has  been  diminished, 
though  not  arbitrarily,  yet  ruthlessly.  Mr.  Round 
even  more  than  Professor  Maitland  has  transformed 
our  ideas  of  knight  service.^^     Much  of  our  Freeman 


FREDERIC   WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


165 


has  been  discarded,  much  especially  of  Freemanism. 
We  have  had  pressed  upon  us  the  central  importance 
of  the  cartae  of  1166,32  ^  gpite  of  their  non-appear- 
ance at  first  and  their  diminutive  appearance  still 
in  the  Select  Charters,  and  we  are  not  likely  either 
to  antedate  the  vetiis  feoffamentum  or  to  miscon- 
strue  super   dominium.     In   our   study   of   Magna 
Carta  ^^  we  have  become  less  enthusiastic  and  rhe- 
torical over  legale  indicium  parium  ^  and  over  lex 
terrae,^^  and  yet  more  genuinely  interested  in  them  ; 
and  we  are  as  much  concerned  to-day  with  the 
interpretation  of   clause  34  ^^  in  the  document   of 
1215,  and  with  the  significance  of  the  powers  of 
distraint  conditionally  conferred  against  the  king, 
in  behalf  of  the  Crown,^'  as  we  were  formerly  with 
the  historic  essential  clauses.     We  do  not  forget 
that  as  long  ago  as  in  the  second  Selden  volume 
Maitland  had  himself  declared  of  Magna  Carta  that 
it  is  a  document  in  which  retrogressive  are  mingled 
with  progressive  clauses.^®    In  the  making  of  these 
and  similar  advances  he  has  taken  a  leading  part. 
He  has  not  fought,  ventured  and  been  victorious, 
without  terms  and  surrenders  :  Mr.  Round  has  been 
watchful   (but   in   a   common   allegiance),   and   in 
Professor  Vinogradoff's   recently   published  Growth 
of  the   English   Manor,^^   especially   in   the   notes, 
there   are   considerations   that   directly   affect   the 
author  of  Domesday  Book,    More,  however,  than 
particular  advances  do  we  owe  to  Maitland,  although 


156      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 


it  was  by  care  for  particulars  that  he  built  up  his 
great  contributions  and  attained  to  his  point  of 
view.  We  think  of  him  at  once  when  we  endeavour 
to  assign  to  seignorial  justice  its  due  place  among 
the  features  of  feudalism  ;  when  we  are  chary  in 
the  use  of  the  expression  *  feudal  system  '  *®  (before 
the  age  of  great  lawyers  and  their  systematising 
proclivities  and  labours) ;  when  we  hold  the  lan- 
guage of  enfeoffment  appropriate  in  1216  ;  when  to 
the  year  1285 — an  already  overburdened  year — we 
ascribe  a  new  event  which  ought  to  make  it 
memorable  in  English  history  ;  *^  or  when,  in  our 
study  of  the  ecclesiastical  jurisprudence  and  of  the 
fimdamental  politics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  we  say 
of  the  Church  that  it  was  a  State.*^  j^q  q^q  ^o 
him  a  wider  and  more  nearly  just  perception  of 
*  interactions  and  interdependences '  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  He  was  a  great  medievalist.  But  that  he 
was  not  merely  a  medievahst  there  is  sufficient  in 
his  writings  to  enforce  ;  and  not  the  least  earnest, 
and  therefore  eloquent,  passages  in  his  books  are 
those  in  which  he  appraises  the  knowledge  of  law 
and  institutions  in  the  making  by  its  suggestive- 
ness  for  us  to-day,  and  thinks,  with  misgivings, 
like  his  chief  fellow-worker,  of  the  problems  of  law 
and  government  for  our  '  complex  and  loosely -knit 
British  Commonwealth.'  *^ 

Many  know  Maitland  by  his  style,  and  cherish 
him  for  it,  who  find  his  subjects  forbidding.     By 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


157 


his  style  he  took  from  his  subjects  much  of  their 
forbidding  character.    The  subjects  were  bom  again 
in  his  hands.     In  general,  the  style  has  more  of  the 
man  than  of  the  subject,  as  style  for  the  subject 
has  prevailed  or  been  ordained  ;    but  it  may  be 
that  history  is  by  too  many  regarded  as  one  instead 
of  several,  and  that  historical  style  has  suffered, 
of  late,  by  repression  in  consequence.    Maitland 
was  himself  a  keen  and  critical  student  of  language  ; 
he  gave  ample  proof,  of  an  accepted  kind,  in  his 
elaborate  study  of  Anglo-French^*  in  one  of  the 
Year  Book  series.     Our  language  seemed  to  him 
*  fluffy.'     He  tried  to  gain  precise  ideas,   and  to 
express  them  precisely  ;    but  he  was  an  artist  in 
words  for  true  effect,  not  a  precisian.     His  fulness 
of  knowledge  and  alertness  of  mind  have  a  style,  a 
literary  expression,  in  correspondence  :    he  carries 
his    thoughts    through ;     he    admits    refinements, 
abounds  in  surprises,  and  is  rich  in  allusions.     There- 
fore, his  style  is  not  a  style  uniformly  sedate  and 
severe  :  it  is  not  docile,  not  conventionally  decorous  : 
it  is  far  from  prudish.     But  he  made  the  English 
language   an   exceptionally   fit   instrument   for  his 
purpose  ;   and  much  of  the  '  irregularity  '  is  due  to 
his  own  deUght  in  work— perhaps  also  to  a  desire 
to    communicate    that    deUght.     It    would    really 
have  been   happiness  to   him   to  know   where  in 
England  is  the  *  very  most  ancient  roll.'     He  enjoyed 
the  sarcasms  and  the  oaths  of  Bereford,  C.J.    He 


158      STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


liked  the  lawyers  of  the  early  years  of  the  fourteenth 
century — ^men  *  not  of  the  sterile  caste  ' — ^gregarious 
and  clubbable  men  ;  and  wished  others  to  know  and 
like  them  also.  When  the  author  of  some  marginal 
glosses  (temp.  Edw.  i.-n.)  on  Bracton's  text  says,*^ 
'  In  Angha  minus  curatur  de  iure  naturaU  quam 
in  aUqua  regione  de  mundo,'  Maitland  (knowing 
something  of  the  history  and  manoeuviings  of 
Natural  Law,  and  something  of  England)  could  not 
becomingly  have  been  silent  in  his  deUght.  Yet 
Maitland,  without  being  magisterial  in  style,  can  be 
masteriy,  as  in  Domesday  Book,^^  when  he  presents 
his  ten-point  summary  in  favour  of  the  large  hide, 
or  is  arguing  in  the  same  work  against  hastily 
formed  ideas  of  corporate,  or  quasi  -  corporate, 
ownership  of  village  commimities.  Moreover,  his 
apparent  recklessness  in  style  is  often  the  result  of 
wide  knowledge  readily  at  his  service,  and  of  his 
liking  for  allusions,  as  if  we  had  all  been  with  him 
wherever  he  had  been  :  for  example  (not  an  extreme 
one),  when  he  says  in  the  chapter  *  The  AngUcan 
Settlement  and  the  Scottish  Reformation,'  *  What 
had  "  come  with  a  lass  "  might  "  go  with  a  lass," 
and  was  in  no  wise  mysterious,'  these  last  words 
meant  much  to  Maitland,  and  much  to  those  who 
had  been  with  him  in  England  in  the  days  when 
the  king  was  merely  '  prerogative '  {praerogativus),^'' 
when  prerogatives  were  not  yet  defined,  and  when 
corpus    politicum    was    being    set    against    corpus 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND 


169 


naturale  :  he  was  writing  (in  the  Cambridge  Modern 
History)  for  the  cultured  many,  and  not  merely  (as 
in  Social  England)  for  the  many  cultivable. 

Those  who  have  welcomed  Maitland's  books  year 
by  year,  as  they  have  appeared,  will  have  much 
that  they  can  never  forget  for  the  manner  as  well 
as  for  the  idea.  We  do  not  forget  how  children 
should  still  say  their  shires  (if  the  shire  is  to  maintain 
the  burgh,  and  the  burgh  defend  the  shire),*®  nor 
that  the  first  match  between  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
(as  Oxford  was  told)  was  a  '  lying  match,'  *•  nor  the 
new  and  happy  et  caetera  in  the  title  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,^^  nor  that  the  queen  was  *  an  artist  to 
the  finger-tips '  ;  ^^  we  do  not  forget  the  direction 
of  *  the  stream  of  political  theory,  when  it  debouches 
from  the  defile  of  the  Middle  Age  into  the  sun-lit 
plain '  ;  ^^  and  who  can  forget  how,  long  before 
Arundel  burnt  Sautre,  *  Langton  burnt  a  deacon  who 
turned  Jew  for  love,  and  the  love  of  a  Jewess  ?  '  ^' 
There  will  be  individual  preferences.  But  there 
wlQ  be  those  who  think  most  frequently  of  the 
words  on  the  520th  and  last  page  of  Domesday 
Book,  coming  after  much  inquiry  made,  many 
questions  put,  and  some  answers  given  : 

*  However,  we  would  not  end  this  essay  upon  a 
discord.  Therefore  a  last  and  peaceful  word. 
There  is  every  reason  why  the  explorers  of  ancient 
English  history  should  be  hopeful.  We  are  begin- 
ning to  learn  that  there  are  intricate  problems  to 


160      STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

be  solved,  and  yet  that  they  are  not  insoluble. 
A  century  hence  the  student's  materials  will  not 
be  in  the  shape  in  which  he  finds  them  now.  In 
the  first  place,  the  substance  of  Domesday  Book 
will  have  been  rearranged.  Those  villages  and 
hundreds  which  the  Norman  clerks  tore  into  shreds 
will  have  been  reconstituted  and  pictured  in  maps, 
for  many  men  from  over  aU  England  will  have 
come  within  King  WiUiam's  speU,  wiU  have  bowed 
themselves  to  him  and  become  that  man's  men. 
Then  there  will  be  a  critical  edition  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  charters  in  which  the  philologist  and  the 
palaeographer,  the  annafist  and  the  formuHst  will 
have  winnowed  the  grain  of  truth  from  the  chaff 
of  imposture.  Instead  of  a  few  photographed 
village  maps,  there  will  be  many  ;  the  history  of 
land-measures  and  of  field-systems  will  have  been 
elaborated.  Above  all,  by  slow  degrees,  the  thoughts 
of  our  forefathers,  their  common  thoughts  about 
common  things,  wiU  have  become  thinkable  once 
more.  There  are  discoveries  to  be  made  ;  but  also 
there  are  habits  to  be  formed.' 

There  is  the  Maitland  we  know  and  revere.  But 
there  is  really  no  other  Maitland  :  Hberty  came  by 
inheritance  to  the  grandson  of  the  author  of  The 
Dark  Ages  and  of  the  Essays  on  the  Eeformation, 
and  liberty  in  unwonted  measure  is  readily  conceded, 
if  need  be,  when  an  author,  personally  immune 
through  self-equipment,  can  disport  himself  amid 


FREDERIC   WILLIAM   MAITLAND 


161 


entanglements — amid    what    to    others    are    fatal 
entanglements. 

It  will  be  asked  whether  Maitland  is  a  great 
historian.     But  he  did  not  set  out  to  be  a  Gibbon, 
or  a  Mommsen,  or  a  Ranke.     His  subject  is  not  as 
wide  as  that  of  Stubbs.     But  he  has  the  marks  of 
a  great  historian.     He  has  a  broad  and  inspiring 
conception   of   history.     He   knows   much    of   the 
things  that  are  of  consequence  in  life  and  in  history, 
that  '  count,'  and  yet  are  with  difficulty  reckoned. 
He  is  not  given  to  system-making,  but  he  is  per- 
sistent in  the  search  for  sequence,  and  not  over- 
ready  with    his   co-ordination.     *  Pour  un  jour  de 
synthase,  il  faut  des  annees  d'analyse.'     He  did  not 
readily  fall  back  upon  the  aid  of  national  character 
or  the  genius  of  a  people,  which,  as  he  said,  stands 
at  the  beck  and  call  of  the  historian.     He  was  more 
eager  to  detect  differences  than  prone  to  reason 
from  and  emphasise  resemblances  :  he  did  not  look 
for  a    portable  village    community.     A   *  Natural 
History  of  Institutions  '  ^*  is  an  aUuring  historical 
and  hterary  goal,  but  we  should  be  very  careful 
that  our  natural  history  is  not  to  real  history  as 
is  natural  law  to  actual  law.     He  had  historical 
imagination,  but  he  insisted  on  the  test  of  par- 
ticulars :   the  *  condition-of -England  '  question  may 
have  to  be  answered  from  account  rolls.     He  was 
liberal  in  the  use  of  words  in  exposition  and  for 
refinements  ;   he  was  exact  in  definitions,  for  essen- 

L 


162      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

tials:  instead  of  feudalism  there  may  be  merely 
vassaUsm  ;  instead  of  saying,  the  Lateran  Council 
aboHshed  the  ordeal,  let  us  say,  it  made  the  ordeal 
impossible  by  prohibiting  the  clergy  from  taking 
part  in  the  ceremony  ;  and  for  *  Erastianism,'  to 
express  the  ecclesiastical  theory  of  Henry  vm., 
should  we  not  substitute  '  Marsilianism,'  or,  better, 
*  Byzantinism,'the  Cdsaro-Papismus  of  Byzantium  ?  ^^ 
With  his  material  under  command,  and  regardful 
of  distinctions,  he  is  a  master  of  the  process  of 
proof  in  difficult  undertakings.  We  see  not  only 
what  we  are  to  know,  but  how  we  come  to  know 
it.  We  are  given  the  raw  material,  and  we  work, 
with  the  worker  himself,  towards  the  finished 
product  or  the  *  attainable  maximum.' 

Professor  Maitland   died   at  the   height  of   his 
powers,  when  he  had  subjected  much  to  himself. 
Much  there  is  left  to  be  done  that  he  could  have 
done  best.    He  might  have  given  us  a  history  of 
hberties  in  the  Middle  Ages.    He  could  have  com- 
mented with  illumination,  in  a  history  of  political 
thought,  on  Marsilius's  definition  of  '  legislator '  ^^ 
(with  its  recognition  of  the  majority  in  poHtics, 
of  which  Maitland  desired  a  history),  or  on  Bodin's 
distinction  between  sovereignty  and  administrative 
authority,^'   or   on  the   qualification   imposed   by 
Gentihs  on  Bodin's  exposition  of  Hberty  in  rehgion.^® 
With  the  aid  of  Gierke   he  could  effectively  have 
laid  bare  the  origins   of  the  politics  of    George 


FREDERIC   WILLIAM  MAITLAND  163 

Buchanan.  He  could  have  introduced  others  than 
Bracton.  He  has  not  even  left  us  anywhere  clear 
and  complete  his  picture  of  medieval  England.^® 

Maitland  may  not  be  one  of  the  great  historians  : 
there  are  few.  But  his  is  the  finest  inteUect  of  the 
nineteenth  century  devoted  to  the  study  of  EngUsh 
history,  and  to  that  study  in  its  most  exacting 
claims. 


BACON,  MILTON,  LAUD 

^  See  Gierke,  Political  Theories  of  the  Middle  Age, 
translated  and  edited  by  Maitland. 

2  '  Li  the  first  place  [with  the  Reformation  in 
England]  we  have  come  upon  what  must  be  called 
a  sudden  catastrophe  in  the  history  of  the  spiritual 
courts.  Henceforth  they  are  expected  to  enforce, 
and  without  complaint  they  do  enforce,  statutes  of 
the  temporal  legislature,  acts  of  the  EngHsh  parUa- 
ment.  Henceforth,  not  only  is  their  sphere  of  action 
limited  by  this  secular  power — that  is  a  very  old 
phenomenon — but  their  decisions  are  dictated  to 
them  by  acts  of  parliament — and  that  is  a  very  new 
phenomenon.' — Maitland,  Roman  Canon  Law  in  the 
Church  of  England,  pp.  90-1.  See  a  criticism  of 
part  of  Maitland's  contention  by  Ogle,  The  Canon 
Law  in  Mediceval  England. 

^  Albericus  Gentilis,  De  lure  Belli,  c.  x. 

*  See  Strype,  Life  of  Parker,  bk.  n.  ch.  xix. 

^  See  Prothero,  Statutes  and  Constitutional  Docu- 
ments, 1558-1625  {3rd  ed.),  pp.  198-9,  for  additional 
extracts,  although  the  important  words,  'which  things 
.  .  .  themselves,'  are  omitted. 

®  '  The  worst  was,  these  two  preachers,  though 
joined  in  affinity  (their  nearest  kindred  being  mar- 
ried together),  acted  with  different  principles,  and 
clashed  one  against  another.  So  that  what  Mr. 
Hooker  delivered  in  the  forenoon,  Mr.  Travers  con- 
futed in  the  afternoon.'    Whereas,  at  the  building 

167 


168      STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

of  Solomon's  Temple,  '  there  was  neither  hammer 
nor  axe  nor  any  tool  of  iron  heard '  (1  Kings  vi.  7), 
in  this  Temple,  continues  Fuller  (Church  History, 
bk.  IX.  sect,  vii.),  'not  only  much  knocking  was 
heard,  but  (which  was  the  worst)  the  nails  and  pms 
which  one  master-builder  drove  in,  were  driven  out 

by  the  other.' 

7  4to,  London,  183  pp.  At  the  very  outset  of  his 
work  Bancroft  associates  contempt  of  government — 
'  lewde  conceites  '—in  civil  interests  with  its  con- 
tempt in  interests  ecclesiastical,  and,  while  he  utters 
warning  against  *  the  deveUsh  and  traiterous  prac- 
tises of  the  Seminary  Priests  and  Jesuites,'  he  is 
more  especially  concerned,  as  the  title  of  the  work 
requires,  with  '  the  lewde  and  obstinate  course,  held 
by    our    pretended    refourmers,    and    Consistorian 

Puritanes  '  (pp.  2-3). 

8  Gratias  agamus  Machiavello  et  huiusmodi  scrip - 
toribus  qui  aperte  et  indissimulanter  prof enmt  quid 
homines  solebant,  non  quid  debeant. — Bacon,  De 
Aitgmentis  Scientiarum. 

»  Speech  in  the  Parhament  of  1601  for  repealing 
superfluous  laws  (Spedding,  Letters  and  Life,  iii.  19). 
Cf.  Hobbes  (whose  politics  have  much  in  common 
with  those  of  Bacon,  whose  secretary  he  was  for  a 
time).  Leviathan,  ch.  xxx.  :  *  A  good  law  is  that 
which  is  "  needful  "  for  the  "  good  of  the  people," 
and  withal  perspicuous.  .  .  .  Unnecessary  laws  are 
not  good  laws,  but  traps  for  money,  which,  where 
the  right  of  the  sovereign  power  is  acknowledged, 
are  superfluous,  and,  where  it  is  not  acknowledged, 
insufiicient  to  defend  the  people.' 

10  *  Administratorem,  procuratorem,  gubernatorem 
iurium  maiestatis  principem  agnosco.  Proprie- 
tarium  vero  et  usufructuarium  maiestatis  nullum 
alium  quam  populum  universum  in  corpus  unum 


NOTES 


169 


symbioticum  ex  pluribus  minoribus  consociationibus 
consociatum.  Quae  maiestatis  iura  adeo,  meo 
iudicio,  illi  consociationi  propria  sunt,  ut  etiamsi 
ilia  se  his  veUt  abdicare,  eaque  in  alium  transferre 
et  ahenare  nequaquam  tamen  id  possit,  non  minus 
quam  vitam  suam  qua  quis  fruitur  alii  communicare 
potest.' — Althusius,  Politica,  Praefatio. 

For  Althusius's  difference  from  Bodin  see  espe- 
cially ch.  ix.,  e.g. :  *  Quod  si  igitur  etiam  secundum 
Bodinum  duplex  est  maiestas  regni  et  regis,  quaero, 
utra  ex  hisce  sit  altera  maior  et  superior  ?  Negari 
non  potest  illam  maiorem  esse  quae  alteram  con- 
stituit,  quaeque  immortaUs  est  in  subiecto  suo, 
populo  sciUcet,  et  alteram  minorem,  quae  in  imius 
persona  consistit  et  cum  eadem  moritur.' 

11  *  Certain  Considerations  touching  the  better 
Pacification  and  Edification  of  the  Church  of 
England '  (Spedding,  Letters  and  Life  of  Francis 
Bacon,  iii.  108-9).  The  whole  paper  is  worthy  of 
attention. 

12  II.  XXV.  9. 

13  Works  (Speddiag,  vii.  647). 

1*  Speech  at  the  opening  of  Parhament,  19th  March 
1604. 

1^  See  Letters  and  Life,  iii.  128. 

1*  Spinoza's  position  on  the  question  of  freedom 
of  thought  and  speech  is  thus  summed  up  by  him 
(Tractatus  Theologico- Politicus,  c.  xx.)  :  *  Ostendi- 
mus  I.  impossibile  esse  hbertatem  hominibus  dicendis 
ea  quae  sentiunt  adimere  ;  n.  banc  Hbertatem,  salvo 
iure  et  authoritate  summarum  potestatum,  unicuique 
concedi,  et  eandem  unumquemque  servari  posse, 
salvo  eodem  iure,  si  nullam  inde  Ucentiam  sumat, 
ad  aUquid  in  rempubhcam  tanquam  ius  introdu- 
cendum  vel  ahquid  contra  receptas  leges  agendum  ; 
m.  banc  eandem  Hbertatem  unumquemque  habere 


170      STUDIES   IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


posse,  servata  reipublicae  pace,  et  nulla  ex  eadem 
incommoda  oriri  quae  facile  coerceri  non  possint ; 
IV.  eandem  salva  etiam  pietate  unumquemque  ha- 
bere posse ;  V.  leges  quae  de  rebus  speculativis  con- 
duntur  inutiles  omnino  esse ;  vi.  denique  ostendi- 
mus,  banc  libertatem  non  tantum  servata  reipublicae 
pace,  pietate  et  summarum  potestatum  iure  posse, 
sed  ad  haec  conservandum,  etiam  debere  concedi.' 

"  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates, 

^®  Iconoclastes,  Preface. 

^*  Beady  and  Easy  Way  to  establish  a  Free 
Commonwealth. 

2®  From  a  sonnet. 

^^  The  Reason  of  Church  Government  urged  against 
Prelacy,  bk.  i.  ch.  iii. 

22  On  the  New  Forcers  of  Conscience  under  the 
Long  Parliament, 

23  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates. 
2*  Areopagitica. 

2^  The  Reason  of  Church  Government  urged  against 
Prelacy,  bk.  i.  ch.  iii. 

26  Qj  fjify^  Religion,  Heresy,  Schism,  Toleration. 

2'  A  Treatise  of  Civil  Power  in  Ecclesiastical  Causes. 
The  following  words  {Of  Reformation  touching 
Church  Discipline  in  England,  bk.  n.)  present  the 
central  argument  m  Milton's  reasoning  on  the 
general  problem  of  Church  and  State  :  *  If,  there- 
fore, the  constitution  of  the  Church  be  already  set 
down  by  divine  precept,  as  all  sides  confess,  then 
can  she  not  be  a  handmaid  to  wait  on  civil  com- 
modities and  respects  ;  and  if  the  nature  and  limits 
of  Church  discipline  be  such  as  are  either  helpful 
to  all  poUtical  estates  indifferently,  or  have  no 
particular  relation  to  any,  then  there  is  no  necessity 
nor  indeed  possibiHty  of  Imking  the  one  with  the 
other  in  a  special  conformation.' 


AN  AMERICAN-INDEPENDENCE  GROUP 

1  Considerations  relative  to  the  North  American 
Colonies  (1765  ;  48  pp.). 

2  The  Life  of  Benjamin  Franklin  written  hy  Him- 
self, ed.  by  John  Bigelow  (2nd  ed.  1879),  i.  302. 

3  Owing  to  his  capacity  and  the  experience  he 
had    had    as    a    governor    and    administrator    in 
Massachusetts  Bay,  South  Carolina,  and  New  Jersey, 
Pownall's   knowledge   of   the   sentiments   and   the 
interests  of  the  colonists  was  probably  not  surpassed 
at  this  time  (1764)  by  that  of  any  other  EngHshman. 
His  Administration  of  the  Colonies,  Part  i.  (131  pp.) 
and  Part  n.  (1774,  xi-fl71  pp.),  is  indispensable 
as  a  primary  authority  on  the  American  Question. 
*  The  several  changes  in  interests  and  territories,' 
writes  Pownall,   *  which  have  taken  place  in  the 
colonies  of  the  European  world  on  the  event  of 
peace,  have  given  a  general  impression  of  some  new 
state  of  things  arising '  {Op.  cit.,  pt.  i.  1).     '  While 
each  country  supposes,  that  its  own  government 
actuates  and  governs  the  trade  of  its  respective 
subjects  and  dependencies,  there  is  in  fact  a  general 
kind  of  lead  in  commerce,  distinct  from  any  of  the 
governments  in  Europe,  that  flows  in  its  own  channel, 
and  is  held  in  motion  by  the  laws  of  its  own  nature ' 
(p.  4).     *  It  is  now  the  duty  of  those  who  govern 
us,  to  carry  forward  this  state  of  things,  to  the 
weaving  this  lead  into  our  system,  that  our  kingdom 
may  be  no  more  considered  as  the  mere  kingdom 
of  this  isle,  with  many  appendages  of  provinces, 

171 


172      STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

colonies,  settlements,  and  other  extraneous  parts  ; 
but  as  a  grand  marine  dominion,  consisting  of  our 
possessions  in  the  Atlantic  and  America  united  into 
a  one  interest,  in  a  one  centre  where  the  seat  of 
government  is.  As  the  rising  of  this  crisis  .  .  .  forms 
precisely  the  object  on  which  government  should 
be  employed ;  so  the  taking  leading  measures 
towards  the  forming  all  these  Atlantic  and  American 
possessions  into  a  one  dominion,  of  which  Great 
Britain  should  be  the  commercial  centre,  to  which 
it  should  be  the  spring  of  power,  is  the  precise  duty 
of  government  at  this  crisis  '  (p.  6).  Pownall  argues, 
not  for  an  abandonment  of  the  claims  and  interests 
of  the  mother-country  commercially,  but  for  an 
extension  and  liberaUsing  of  the  whole  commercial 
system  (see  especially  pp.  115-17),  and  for  a  revised 
and  carefully  designed  administrative  system  with 
fewer  restrictions,  or  with  restrictions  of  a  less  in- 
appropriate kind,  than  were  then  being  resented  : 
restrictions  would  be  less  irksome,  if  the  colonists 
could  be  brought  to  feel  that  they  were  true  members 
of  the  *  commercial  dominion.'  The  union  of  the 
colonies  was  improbable  :  in  this  respect  nothing 
was  to  be  feared  by  Britain  if  only  there  were  no 
*  tampering  activity  of  wrongheaded  interference ' 
(p.  34).  But  there  was  need  of  *  some  general  system 
of  administration  .  .  .  some  plan  of  which  should 
be  (whatever  may  be  the  changes  of  the  ministry 
at  home,  or  in  the  governors  and  officers  employed 
abroad)  uniformly  and  permanently  pursued  by 
measures  founded  on  the  actual  state  of  things  as 
they  arise '  (p.  9).  In  1774  (the  year  before  the  second 
great  crisis,  as  Part  i.  had  been  pubUshed  the  year 
before  the  first)  Pownall's  own  view  of  his  Uberal- 
mindedness  in  tone  and  reasoning  ten  years  earlier 
went  a  little  beyond  the  facts,  but  his  earnestness 


NOTES 


173 


had  come  to  be  even  deeper,  and  he  pointed,  as 
Frankhn  and  others  pointed,  to  a  leading  cause  of 
the  disastrous  policy  pursued  towards  the  colonies 
in  the  baneful  operation  of  the  rivakies  of  *  con- 
nexions '  and  the  interests  of  party  men.     '  I  own,' 
he  says,  '  I  was  in  hopes  [in  1764]  that  that  true 
system  of  efficient  government,  founded  in  political 
liberty  (which  all  seemed  to  possess  here)  might  be 
established  in  the  colonies  :    I  was  sure,  from  the 
temper  and  genius  of  the  people  in  America  (as  they 
were  when  I  knew  them),  it  would  be  nourished  and 
maintamed  there,     I  have  had  the  chagrin  to  find, 
on  the  contrary,  that  from  the  moment  in  which 
American  affairs  became  the  object  of  poUtics  in 
this  island,  they  became  the  tools  and  instruments 
of  parties  :   they  have  been  taken  up  and  acted  in 
only  on  party  views,  on  party  considerations '  (p.  3). 
Like  Edmund  Burke,  Pownall  lamented  the  absence 
of  plan  and  consistency  from  measures  adopted: 
there    was    a   lack    of   comprehensiveness    and   of 
imagination.     *  I  wish,'  he  wrote,  '  the  government 
of  this  country  to  define  its  own  rights  ;  and  stand- 
ing on  that  sure  ground,  to  acknowledge  those  of 
others.    I  wish  the  people  of  America,  as  they  love 
liberty,  so  to  honour  true  government,  which  is 
the  only  basis  on  which  real  liberty  can  stand  :   and 
in  that  line  to  see  peace '   (pp.  x-xi).      For  twenty 
years  a  British  Union,  with  colonial  representatives 
admitted  to  the  Parliament  in  Britain,  had  been 
recommended  repeatedly  by  *  those  who  knew  the 
circumstances   of  both   coimtries.'     But   *  this  in- 
teresting and  decisive  crisis  of  the  affairs  of  this 
country,  wherein  a  British  Union  might  have  been 
formed,  has  been  treated  like  Friar  Bacon's  brazen 
head  in  the  puppet  show.     The  nation,  whom  it 
concerned  to  watch  it,  slept  while  it  pronounced 


174      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

"Time  is  to  come";  "Time  is."  They  are 
awakened  now  with  the  breaking-up  of  the  charm, 
and  have  only  heard  "  Time 's  past."  The  colonies 
now  in  their  turn  have  learnt  to  renounce  this  union. 
To  obviate  even  the  offer  of  it,  they  previously 
reject  it :  they  say  it  is  impracticable,  and  will 
not  hear  of  it '  (p.  83).  There  follows  (pp.  84-6)  one 
of  the  most  statesmanlike  utterances  on  the  Ameri- 
can Question :  '  If  our  colonies  by  any  new-excited 
property  of  attraction  amongst  themselves,  are 
drawing  together  in  an  American  Union :  if  we  find 
this  American  attraction  to  be  electrical;  having 
learnt  how  this  is  raised  by  friction,  we  should  know 
that  the  application  of  force  wiU  the  more  increase 
its  power.  If  this,  then,  be  the  case  ...  if  Great 
Britain  and  the  colonies  are  come  to  that  dreadful 
crisis,  that  they  are  no  longer  to  remain  on  their  old 
standing :  if  there  cannot  be  a  British  Union  :  may 
the  Americans  see  and  be  convinced,  that  the  safest 
and  happiest  form  of  an  American  Union,  is  that, 
whereof  a  British  Stadtholder,  Lieutenant  of  the 
Crown,  may  have  the  lead,  command  and  govern- 
ment, imder  such  establishments  as  derive  from  pre- 
conceived modes  of  policy,  before  it  shall  be  driven 
on  by  force !  And  may  Britain  have  the  temper, 
the  spirit,  and  the  wisdom  to  take  such  lead.^ 

*  The  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies  Asserted  and 
Proved,  by  James  Otis,  was  published  at  Boston  in 
1764.  As  reprinted  in  London  (?  1766)  it  is  a 
work  of  120  pages.  Pages  3-35  consist  of  an  intro- 
duction on  the  origin  of  government ;  pages  35-8 
treat  of  colonies  in  general;  pages  38-47,  of  the 
natural  rights  of  colonists ;  pages  47-99,  of  the 
political  and  civil  rights  of  the  British  colonists  ; 
and  pages  100-20  consist  of  an  appendix.  The 
notes  of  the  work  are  its  moderation  and,  in  parts,  its 


NOTES 


176 


grand  seriousness  :    it  has  the  note  of   passion  re- 
strained by  the  writer's  consciousness  of  the  gravity 
of  the  problem.     Indebted  in  large  measure  (like 
almost   all   the   writers   for  the   colonists)   to   the 
reasoning  of  Locke,  but  not  merely  submissive  to 
him,    Otis   finds   in   four   fundamentals    *  the   first 
principles  of  law  and  justice  and  the  great  barriers 
of  a  free  state,  and  of  the  English  constitution  in 
particular  '  :   government  must  be  by  stated  laws  ; 
the  end  of  these  laws  must  be  ultimately  the  food 
of  the  people  ;  *  taxes  are  not  to  be  laid  on  the  people, 
but  by  their  own  consent  in  person,  or  by  deputa- 
tion *  ;   and  *  their  whole  power  is  not  transferable  ' 
(p.  55).     *  To  say  the   parUament  is  absolute   and 
arbitrary,  is  a  contradiction.     The  parliament  can- 
not make  2  and  2,  5  :    omnipotency  cannot  do  it. 
The  supreme  power  in  a  state,  \ajus  dicere  only  :  jus 
dare,  strictly  speaking,  belongs  alone  to  God  *  (p.  70). 
On   both    the    commercial    and    the    more   highly 
political  aspect  of  the  problem,  Otis  soimds  a  note 
of  warning.     He  was  sure  that  the  colonies  had  '  the 
natural  means  of  every  manufacture  in  Europe,  and 
some  that  are  out  of  their  power  to  make  or  pro- 
duce.   It  will  scarcely  be  believed  a  himdred  years 
hence    that    American   manufactures    could    have 
been  brought  to  such  perfection,  as  they  will  then 
probably  be,  if  the  present  measures  are  pushed. 
One  single  act  of  parliament,*  he  adds  in  significant 
words,  '  has  set  people  a-thinking,  in  six  months, 
more   than   they   had   done   in   their   whole   lives 
before '  (pp.  81-2).     And  yet  *  the  ministry,  in  all 
future  generations,   may  rely  on  it,  that  British 
America  will  never  prove  undutiful,  till  driven  to  it, 
as  the  last  fatal  resort  against  ministerial  oppression, 
which  will  make  the  wisest  mad,  and  the  weakest 
strong '    (p.    77).     He  summed    up   his   argument 


176      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

as  follows  (pp.  98-9)  :  that  '  civil  government  is  of 
God  '  ;  '  that  no  parts  of  his  Majesty's  dominions 
can  be  taxed  without  their  consent;  that  every 
part  has  a  right  to  be  represented  in  the  supreme 
or  some  subordinate  legislature  ;  that  the  refusal 
of  this  would  seem  to  be  a  contradiction  in  practice 
to  the  theory  of  the  constitution  ;  that  the  colonies 
are  subordinate  dominions,  and  are  now  in  such  a 
state,  as  to  make  it  best  for  the  good  of  the  whole, 
that  they  should  not  only  be  continued  in  the 
enjoyment  of  subordinate  legislation,  but  be  also 
represented  in  some  proportion  to  their  number  and 
estates  in  the  grand  legislative  of  the  kingdom  : 
that  this  would  firmly  unite  all  parts  of  the  British 
Empire,  in  the  greatest  peace  and  prosperity,  and 
render  it  invulnerable  and  perpetual.' 

^  Considerations,  pp.  27-9. 

«  Ihid.,  pp.  16  ;  32-4. 

'  Ihid.,  p.  35.  The  complaint  is  often  made  by 
contemporary  writers.  Cf.  Otis,  op,  cit,  pp.  36-7, 
and  Witherspoon,  Works  (1804-5),  viii.  306. 

8  Kant,  Principles  of  Politics,  translated  by  Hastie 

(1891),  p.  62. 

»  The  expression  was  usual  at  the  time.  *  When 
an  American,'  said  Witherspoon,  '  spoke  of  going 
to  England,'  before  the  troubles  arose,  *  he  always 
called  it  going  home:— Works,  ix.  169. 

10  Writings  of  John  Jay,  ii.  410,  quoted  in  Winsor, 
Narrative  and  Critical  History  of  America,  vi.  249. 

11  Samuel  Bard,  Americanus ;  Corbin  Griffin, 
Virginiensis  ;  Thomas  Ruston,  Pennsylvaniensis  ; 
Jacobus  Tapscott,  Americanus ;  Samuel  Martin, 
Americanus.— List  of  the  Graduates  in  Medicine  in 
the  University  of  Edinburgh,  sub  anno  1765. 

12  William  Robertson,  the  historian.  Principal 
of  the  University   1762-93.     'The  ferment  which 


NOTES 


177 


.  .  .  agitated  our  North  American  Colonies '  inter- 
fered, he  wrote,  with  the  completion  of  the  design 
of  his  History  of  America,  He  heartily  approved  of 
the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act.  His  poUtical  views 
on  the  American  Question  in  its  later  stages  are 
clearly  expressed — partly  with  the  wisdom  that 
comes  after  the  event — in  a  letter  dated  6th  Octo- 
ber 1775  :  *  Incapacity,  or  want  of  information,' 
he  wrote,  *  has  led  the  people  employed  there  [in 
America]  to  deceive  the  Ministry.  Trusting  to  them, 
they  have  been  trifling  for  two  years,  when  they 
should  have  been  serious,  until  they  have  rendered 
a  very  simple  piece  of  business  extremely  per- 
plexed. They  have  permitted  colonies  disjointed 
by  nature  and  situation  to  consoUdate  into  a  regular 
systematic  confederacy  ;  and  when  a  few  regiments 
stationed  in  each  capital  would  have  rendered  it 
impossible  for  them  to  take  arms,  they  have  suffered 
them  quietly  to  levy  and  train  forces,  as  if  they 
had  not  known  and  seen  against  whom  they  were 
prepared.  But  now  we  are  fairly  committed,  and 
I  do  think  it  fortunate  that  the  violence  of  the 
Americans  has  brought  matters  to  a  crisis  too  soon 
for  themselves.  From  the  beginning  of  the  con- 
test I  have  always  asserted  that  independence 
was  their  object.  The  distinction  between  taxation 
and  regulation  is  mere  folly.  There  is  not  an 
argument  against  our  right  of  taxing  that  does 
not  conclude  with  tenfold  force  against  our  power 
of  regulating  their  trade.  They  may  profess  or 
disclaim  what  they  please,  and  hold  the  language 
that  best  suits  their  purpose  ;  but  if  they  have  any 
meaning,  it  must  be  that  they  should  be  free  states, 
connected  with  us  by  blood,  by  habit,  and  by 
rehgion,  but  at  liberty  to  buy  and  sell  and  trade 
where   and   with   whom    they   please.     This   they 

M 


178      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

wiU  one  day  attain,  but  not  just  now,  if  there 
be  any  degree  of  political  wisdom  or  vigour  re- 
maining  We  are  past  the  hour  of  lenitives 

and  half  exertions.'  '  It  is  lucky,'  he  added,  that 
my  American  History  was  not  finished  before  this 
event  How  many  plausible  theories  that  I  should 
have  been  entitled  to  form,  are  contradicted  by 
what  has  now  happened !  '—Account  of  the  Life 
and  Writings  of  William  Robertson  (1801),  pp.  80-1. 

13  Catalogue  of  the  Graduates  of  the  University  : 
Doctors  of  Laws,  sub  anno  1754.  The  foUowmg  is 
the  relative  excerpt  from  the  College  Minutes,  1733- 

1790: 

*  Edmr.  20th  June  1754. 

*A  Faculty  being  called  a  motion  was  made 
to  confer  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  on  CoUonel 
Lee  of  Virginia.  Mr.  M^Kenzie  and  Mr.  Erskin 
agreemg  to  the  motion  the  degree  was  ordered  and 
his  Diploma  ordered  to  be  wrote  out  in  the  usual 
manner  it  being  understood  that  the  s^  Colli  Lee 
was  to  give  50£  str.  to  the  Library.' 

14  Boswell,  Life  of  Johnson,  ed.  by  Bu-rell,  iv.  76. 

15  Ibid.,  iv.  75. 

i«  The  American  Times,  A  Satire,  m  Three  Farts. 
In  which  are  delineated  the  Characters  of  the  Leaders 
of  the  American  Rebellion.  By  CamiUo  Quemo 
[Jonathan  OdeU].  The  satire  was  pubUshed  at 
New  York  in  1780  along  with  Cow  Chace.  See  p.  60 
for  the  lines  quoted  (British  Museum  copy). 

1'  Franklin,  Life,  ed.  by  Bigelow,  ii.  425. 

18  Ibid.,  i.  108.  ^       ,  .u 

i«  There  is  no  authority  in  the  records  ot  the 
University  for  the  statement  made  by  Sparks,  Life 
of  Franklin  (1840),  i.  267,  that  Franklin  received 
an  honorary  degree— that  of  Doctor  of  Laws— from 
the  University  of  Edinburgh. 


NOTES 


179 


20  See  Sparks,  op.  cit.,  i.  334-5.  Cooper,  Stiles 
and  Winthrop  are  mentioned  by  Sparks  as  owing 
the  honour  to  Franklin's  recommendation. 

The  following  are  the  Americans  who  received  the 
honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  from  the 
University  of  Edinburgh  between  1762  and  1785  : 
Ezra  Stiles,  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  in  March  1765 
(one  out  of  three  on  whom  the  degree  was  conferred 
in  that  year)  ;  Eleazer  Wheelock,  Dartmouth, 
New  Hampshire;  Samuel  Cooper,  A.M.,  Boston, 
New  England;  and  Andrew  Eliot,  Boston,  New 
England,  in  1767  (three  out  of  five) ;  James  Dana, 
A.M.,  WaUingford,  New  England,  and  John  Rogers, 
New  York,  in  1768  (two  out  of  five)  ;  Samuel 
Haven,  Portsmouth,  New  England,  in  1769  (one 
out  of  four) ;  John  Ewing,  Philadelphia,  in  1774 ; 
Alexander  Hewat,  Charlestown,  South  Carolina,  in 
1780  ;  Simeon  Howard  and  John  Lathrop,  Ministers 
of  Boston,  New  England,  in  1785. 

In  1771  (4th  July)  John  Winthrop,  Professor  of 
Mathematics,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  received 
the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws.  The  degree  was 
not  again  conferred  on  any  American  till  February 
1785,  when  the  recipients  were  His  Excellency 
Jonathan  Trumbull,  Governor  of  Connecticut ;  the 
Hon.  James  Bowdoin,  President  of  the  American 
Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences ;  and  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Williams,  Professor  of  Mathematics,  Cam- 
bridge, New  England.  (See  Catalogue  of  Graduates, 
sub  annis.) 

21  Thomas  Hutchinson,  Governor  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay.  In  his  Diary  for  24th  March  1778  he 
wrote  :  *  To  my  surprize  Dr.  Robertson  of  Edinburgh 
came  in  about  noon.  I  had  corresponded  with 
him  in  America,  but  never  saw  him.  He  has  laid 
aside   his   History   of   the   English    Colonies.    He 


180      STUDIES  m  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


gave  this  reason — there  was  no  knowing  what 
would  be  the  future  condition  of  them.  ...  He 
said,  upon  Dr.  Franklin's  recommendation,  he  had 
procured  Diplomas  for  several  of  the  New  England 
Clergy,  who  he  had  reason  to  beheve  became  active 
in  promoting  the  revolt,  and  mentioned  Channing  ; 
and  upon  my  naming  Cooper,  remembered  him 
also,— and  Winthrop,  tho'  not  of  the  aergy.'— 
Diary  and  Letters  of  Thomas  Hutchinson,  ed.  by 
P.  0.  Hutchinson  (1886),  ii.  194-5. 

22  For  Franklin's  own  account  of  the  '  Hutchinson 
Letters  dispute  '  see  Life  (Bigelow),  ii.  186-238. 

23  For  facts  and  arguments  as  to  the  dates  of 
signing,  see  Friedenwald,  The  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence (1904),  ch.  vi.  *  There  could  have  been 
no  signing  on  July  4  '  (p.  150).  For  Lives  of  the 
Signers  written  by  pious  hands,  see  Sanderson's 
Biography  of  the  Signers  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  (1823-27). 

24  The  expression  was  first  applied  to  the  Declara- 
tion by  a  distinguished  American,  Rufus  Choate,  in 
1856,  in  a  *  Letter  to  the  Whigs  of  Maine  '  :  *  the 
glittering  and  soimding  generahties  of  natural  right 
which  make  up  the  Declaration  of  Independence.' 

Even  as  late  as  1856  some  courage  was  required 
in  America  thus  to  animadvert  upon  fundamentals 
in  a  national  confession  of  poUtical  faith.  Bancroft, 
e,g.y  had  written  in  his  History  of  the  American 
Revolution  (i.  3),  published  four  years  earher  : 
*  The  authors  of  the  Revolution  avowed  for  their 
object  the  weKare  of  mankind,  and  believed  that 
they  were  in  the  service  of  their  own  and  of  all 
future  generations.  Their  faith  was  just.  .  .  .  All 
men  are  brothers  ;  and  aU  are  bondsmen  for  one 
another."  Again,  in  1860,  he  wrote  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  in  his  History  of  the  United 


NOTES 


181 


suites  (vm.  472) :  '  The  bill  of  rights  which  it 
proiQulgates,  is  of  rights  that  are  older  than  human 
institutions,  and  spring  from  the  eternal  justice 
that  IS  anterior  to  the  state.'  '  The  heart  of  Jefferson 
^.T  W.^  declaration,  and  of  congress  in  adopt- 
mg  It,  beat  for  all  humanity.  The  assertion  of  right 
was  made  for  the  entire  world  of  mankind,  and  aU 
coming  generations,  without  any  exception  what- 

Mr.    Rufus    Choate's    criticism,    which    poUtical 
science  and  sagacity  support,  was  abundantly  an- 
ticipated by  Loyahst  writers,  in  propounding  and 
m  condemmng  principles,  in  the  two  or  three  years 
preceding  1776      Theu-  standpoint  is  expressed  as 
foUows  in  one  of  the  best-written,  ablest,  and  highest- 
toned  of  contemporary  pamphlets-^^  Letter  from 
a  Vtrginmn  to  the  Members  of  the  Congress  to  beheld 
at    Fhiladelphia,   on    the  first  of   September,   177 A 
(Anonymous  ;    1774,  [?  Boston],  29  pp.) :    *  Your 
opinions  wiU  have  the  effect  of  laws;   and  your 

resolves  may  decide  the  fate  of  America The 

great  outhnes,  the  fundamental  principles  of  our 
constitution,  are  within  the  reach  of  almost  eveiy 
man  s    capacity ;    they    require    httle    more    than 
leisure  to  study  them,  memory  to  retain  them,   and 
candour  to  form  a  true  judgment  of  them  ;    un- 
happily for  the  order  and  peace  of  society,   this 
inestunable  privilege  is  but  too  often  abused      Men 
m  general  are  governed  more  by  their  temper  than 
then-  judgment ;    they  have  httle  leisure  and  still 
less  mchnation,   to  inform   themselves  exactlv  of 
the  necessary  constitutional  powers  of  the  supreme 
magistrate  or  of  their  own  legal  rights  ;   they  have 
been  told  that  hberty  is  a  very>eat  blessing  ;  they 
talk  mc^santly  of  it ;  they  find  something  enchant 
ing  m  the  very  sound  of  the  word ;    ask  them  the 


182      STUDIES  m  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

meaning  of  it,  they  think  you  design  to  affront 
them  ;  push  them  to  a  definition,  they  give  you  at 
once  a  description  of  the  state  of  Nature.  .  .  .  Hand 
bills,  News  Papers,  party  Pamphlets  are  the  shallow 
and  turbid  sources  from  whence  they  derive  their 
notions  of  government ;  these  they  pronounce  as 
confidently  and  dogmatically,  as  if  a  poUtical  pro- 
blem was  to  be  solved  as  clearly  as  a  mathematical 
one,  and  as  if  a  bold  assertion  amounted  to  a  de- 
monstration "  (pp.  5-7).  *  Teach  the  people  in  mercy 
to  beware  how  they  wantonly  draw  their  swords 
in  defence  of  political  problems,  distinctions,  refine- 
ments, about  which  the  best  and  the  wisest  men,  the 
friends  as  well  as  the  enemies  of  America,  differ 
in  their  opinions,  lest  while  we  deny  the  mother 
coimtry,  every  mode,  every  right  of  taxation,  we 
give  her  the  rights  of  conquest '  (p.  29,  concluding 

sentence). 

The  best  contemporary  and  immediate  criticism 
of  the  principles  and  alleged  facts  founded  on  in  the 
Declaration  is  probably  that  of  Lind,  a  barrister 
in  London,  in  his  Answer  to  the  Declaration  of  the 
American  Congress  (London,  1776 ;  132  pp.)— a 
work  which  passed  through  several  editions — at 
least  five — in  the  year  of  its  publication.  *An 
attempt,'  he  said,'  *  was  made  to  estabUsh  a  theory 
of  government ;  a  theory  as  absurd  and  visionary, 
as  the  system  of  conduct  in  defence  of  which  it  is 
estabUshed,  is  nefarious  "  (p.  119). 

In  the  same  year  Hutchinson  pubhshed  his 
Strictures  upon  the  Declaration  of  the  Congress  of 
Philadelphia  ;  in  a  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord  (London, 
1776;  32  pp.).  (See  Diary,  ii.  112-13.)^  The 
pamphlet  is  more  forcibly  written  than  Lind*s,  but 
it  is  less  exphcit.  Hutchinson's  views  (in  a  re- 
trospect) are  thus  expressed  by  him ;    *  I  am  of 


NOTES 


183 


opinion  that,  if  no  taxes  or  duties  had  been  laid 
upon  the  colonies,  other  pretexts  would  have  been 
found  for  exception  to  the  authority  of  Parliament. 
The  body  of  the  people  in  the  colonies,  I  know, 
were  easy  and  quiet.  They  felt  no  burdens.  They 
were  attached,  indeed,  in  every  colony  to  their 
own  particular  constitutions,  but  the  supremacy  of 
Parhament  over  the  whole  gave  them  no  concern. 
They  had  been  happy  under  it  for  an  hundred  years 
past.  They  feared  no  imaginary  evils  for  an  hundred 
years  to  come.  But  there  were  men  in  each  of  the 
principal  colonies,  who  had  independence  in  view, 
before  any  of  those  taxes  were  laid,  or  proposed, 
which  have  since  been  the  ostensible  cause  of 
resisting  the  execution  of  Acts  of  Parhament.  Those 
men  have  conducted  the  rebeUion  in  the  several 
stages  of  it.  .  .  .  Their  designs  of  independence 
began  soon  after  the  reduction  of  Canada,  relying 
upon  the  future  cession  of  it  by  treaty.  They  could 
have  no  other  pretence  to  a  claim  of  independence, 
and  they  made  no  other  at  first,  than  what  they 
called  the  natural  rights  of  mankind,  to  choose 
their  own  forms  of  government,  and  to  change  them 
when  they  pleased.  This,  they  were  soon  con- 
vinced, would  not  be  sufficient  to  draw  the  people 
from  their  attachment  to  constitutions  under  which 
they  had  so  long  been  easy  and  happy  :  some 
grievances,  real  or  imaginary,  were  therefore  neces- 
sary.'— Strictures,  p.  4.  In  his  speech  at  the  *  General 
Court  or  Assembly  at  the  Massachusetts  Bay,'  at 
Boston,  on  6th  January  1773  (British  Museum 
Add.  MSS.,  35,912,  ff.  180-7),  Hutchinson  had  said : 
*  I  know  no  line  that  can  be  drawn  between  the 
supreme  authority  of  Parhament  and  the  total 
independence  of  the  colonies.  It  is  impossible  there 
should  be  two  independent  legislatures  in  one  and 


184      STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


the  same  State ;  for  although  there  may  be  one 
Head,  the  King,  yet  the  two  legislative  bodies  will 
make  two  Governments,  as  distinct  as  the  Kingdoms 
of  England  and  Scotland  before  the  Union.  .  .  . 
Independence  I  may  not  allow  myseK  to  think  that 
you  can  possibly  have  in  contemplation.' 

2s  Franklin  in  a  letter  from  London  to  Lord  Kames, 
11th  April  1767  :  '  I  am  fully  persuaded  with  you, 
that  a  consolidating  union  ^  by  a  fair  and  equal 
representation  of  all  the  parts  of  this  empire  in 
Parliament,  is  the  only  firm  basis  on  which  its 
poUtical  grandeur  and  prosperity  can  be  founded. 
Ireland  once  wished  it,  but  now  rejects  it.  The 
time  has  been,  when  the  colonies  might  have  been 
pleased  with  it ;  they  are  now  indifferent  about  it ; 
and,  if  it  is  much  longer  delayed,  they  too  will 
refuse  it.  But  the  people  of  this  country  cannot 
bear  the  thought  of  it,  and  therefore  it  will  be 
delayed.  Every  man  in  England  seems  to  con- 
eider  himseK  as  a  piece  of  a  sovereign  over  America  ; 
seems  to  jostle  himself  into  the  throne  with  the 
King,  and  talks  of  our  subjects  in  the  colonies,  .  .  . 
All  the  colonies  acknowledge  the  King  as  their 
Sovereign  ;  his  Governors  there  represent  his  per- 
son :  Laws  are  made  by  their  Assembhes  or  little 
Parliaments,  with  the  Governor's  assent,  subject 
still  to  the  King's  pleasure  to  confirm  or  annul 
them  :  suits  arising  in  the  colonies,  and  differences 
between  colony  and  colony,  are  determined  by  the 
King  in  Council.  In  this  view,  they  seem  so  many 
separate  Httle  states,  subject  to  the  same  Prince. 
The  sovereignty  of  the  King  is  therefore  easily  under- 
stood. But  nothing  is  more  common  here  than  to 
talk  of  the  sovereignty  of  Parliament,  and  the 
sovereignty  of  This  Nation  over  the  colonies  ;  a 
kind  of  sovereignty,  the  idea  of  which  is  not  so 


notes 


185 


clear,  nor  does  it  clearly  appear  on  what  foundation 
it  is  estabUshed.' — ^Tytler,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and 
Writings  of  Lord  Kames  (2nd  ed.,  1814),  ii.  103,  108  ; 
Franklin,  Life,  i.  616,  618. 

2^  It  was  Rush,  according  to  his  own  testimony, 
who  induced  Paine  to  prefer  the  title  *  Common 
Sense  '  to  the  title  *  Plain  Truth.' 

2^  The  Works  of  James  Wilson,  edited  by  Andrews 
(2  vols.,  Chicago,  1896),  i.  2-3. 

28  The  American  Times  (1780),  pp.  45-6. 

-^  Considerations  on  the  Nature  and  Extent  of  the 
Legislative  Authority  of  the  British  Parliament.  See 
Works  (3  vols.,  1804),  iii.  199-246,  and  ii.  601-43 
(ed.  of  1896),  especially  pp.  524-6,  526,  530,  633-4, 
636,  641-2. 

30  Works  (1804),  iii.  249-69,  and  (1896)  ii.  647-65, 
especially  pp.  664-6. 

3^  See  Memorial  Book  of  the  SesquicentennicU 
Celebration  of  the  Founding  of  the  College  of  New 
Jersey  (New  York,  1898),  pp.  327-9. 

32  Works,  viii.  308-30. 

33  The  American  Times  (1780),  pp.  47-49. 

34  Works,  V.  176-216. 

35  Works,  ix.  168. 

3«  Works,  V.  217-36. 
3'  Works,  vii.  280-1. 

38  Works,  V.  237-70. 

39  Works,  V.  248. 
^^  Works,  viii.  330. 

*^  See  Memorial  Book  of  the  Sesquicentennial 
Celebration,  pp.  112,  391. 

42  Works,  ix.  146-6. 

43  See  OUver,  Alexander  Hamilton  (1906),  p.  18. 
Hamilton  thereupon  went  to  King's  College 
(Columbia). 


SOME  MARKS  OF  ENGLISH  HISTORY 


1  Burke,  Correspondence,  iv.  118:  Letter  to 
Dupont. 

2  Speeches  (1853),  iv.  580-1. 

3  Ibid,,  iv.  374. 

*  Ibid.,  iv.  568. 
^  Ibid.,  iv.  568. 

*  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  Speech  in  defence  of 
Peltier,  21st  February  1803  :  Miscellaneovs  Works 
(1851),  p.  666. 

■^  Oceana  and  Other  Works  (ed.  1747),  p.  681. 

®  Toland  in  his  Life  of  Harrington ;   see  op.  cit., 

XXX. 

*  See  Burton,  Parliamentary  Diary  (1828),  i.  362, 
363,  364. 

i«  Ibid.,  i.  274. 

11  Ibid.,  i.  254. 

12  J&iV;.,  ii.  467-8. 

1*  ^  ^ne/  Ftet^  and  Survey  of  the  Dangerous  and 
Pernicious  Errors  to  Church  and  State,  in  Mr.  Hobbes's 
Book,  entitled  Leviathan  (1676),  p.  85. 

1*  Ibid.,  p.  117.  Probably  the  most  relevant  part 
of  Clarendon's  criticism  of  Hobbes  is  found  in  the 
words,  '  And  what  greater  mischief  and  ruin  can 
threaten  the  greatest  Prince,  than  that  their  sub- 
jects should  believe,  that  aU  the  Hberty  they  have, 
consists  only  in  those  things  which  the  Sovereign 
hath  hitherto  pretermitted,  that  is,  which  he  hath 
not  yet  taken  from  them  .  .  .  ?  ' — Ibid.,  p.  82. 

1^  Qarendon,  Life  (1759),  i.  81. 

186 


NOTES 


187 


!•  Ibid.,  ii.  7. 

1'  Civil  Government,  ch.  xiv.  §  164. 

1®  Speeches,  iv.  745. 

i»  Ibid.,  iv.  750. 

20  gip  Thomas  Smith's  Commonwealth  of  England 
is  professedly  and  in  fact  an  exposition  of  govern- 
ment in  the  England  of  his  day,  set  forth  *  not  in 
that  sort,  as  Plato  made  his  Commonwealth,  or 
Xenophon  his  Kingdome  of  Persia,  nor  as  Sir  Thomas 
More  his  Utopia,  being  fained  Commonwealthes,  such 
as  never  was  nor  shall  be,  vaine  imaginations,  fan- 
tasies of  philosophers,  to  occupy  the  time,  and  to 
exercise  their  wits  :  but  as  England  standeth,  and 
is  governed  at  this  day  the  eight  and  twentie  of 
March,  Anno  1565  .  .  .  and  in  the  one  and  fiftieth 
yeere  of  mine  age.' — Ch.  xi.  283-4  (ed.  1633). 


POLITICS  AS  A  PRACTICAL  STUDY 


1  Spinoza,  Tractatus  Politicus,  c.  i.  §  1.    Cf.  i.  §§  3-4. 
*  lura  autem  communia  et  negotia  publica  a  viris 

acutissimis  sive  astutis  sive  callidis  instituta  et 
tractata  sunt ;  adeoque  vix  credibile  est,  nos 
aliquid,  quod  communi  societati  ex  usu  esse  queat, 
posse  concipere,  quod  occasio  seu  casus  non  obtulerit, 
quodque  homines,  communibus  negotiis  intenti, 
suaeque  securitati  consulentes,  non  viderint.' — c.  i. 
§  3.  In  the  same  chapter,  §  6,  he  says,  'imperii 
virtus  securitas.* 

2  *  Maiestas  est  summa  in  cives  ac  subditos  legibus- 
que   soluta  potestas.'— De   Republica,  hb.  i.  c.   8. 

*  Maiestas  vero  nee  maiore  potestate,  nee  legibus 
ullis,  nee  tempore  definitur.' — Ibid. 

^  Cf .   the   concluding   words   of   the   Leviathan  : 

*  And  thus  I  have  brought  to  an  end  my  Discourse 
of  Civil  and  Ecclesiastical  Government,  occasioned 
by  the  disorders  of  the  present  time.  .  .  .'  The 
lessons  of  the  Civil  War,  from  the  standpoint  of 
Hobbes,  are  enforced  also  in  A  Dialogue  of  the 
Common  Law  and  in  Beheinoth — in  the  latter  in 
historical  review.  See,  e.g.,  the  seven  causes  of  the 
people  being  *  corrupted  '  and  '  seduced  '  from  their 
allegiance  :  Behemoth,  Part  i.  pp.  166-9  of  vol.  vi. 
of  The  English  Works  of  Thomas  Hobbes,  ed.  by 
Molesworth  (1840). 

*  Locke's  reasoning  and  assertions  are  especially 
pertinent  to  1688  :  (a)  in  his  conclusion  that '  absolute 
monarchy,  which  by  some  men  is  counted  for  the 

188 


NOTES 


189 


only  government  in  the  world,  is  indeed  inconsistent 
with  civil  society,  and  so  can  be  no  form  of  govern- 
ment  at  all '  (§  90) ;  (b)  in  his  general  defence  of 
the  supremacy  of  the  legislative  power,  but  with 
qualifications  as  laid  down  in  §  131  ;  (c)  in  some  of 
his  particular  pleas  for  probity  and  purity,  as  where 
he  says,  with  his  mind  on  recent  intervention  by 
the  Crown,  that  *  thus  to  regulate  candidates  and 
electors,  and  new  model  the  ways  of  election,  what 
is  it  but  to  cut  up  the  government  by  the  roots, 
and  poison  the  very  fountain  of  pubUc  security  ?  * 
(§  222)  ;  and  (d),  perhaps  most  conspicuously,  in 
his  conception  and  admitted  applications  of  preroga- 
tive as  *  being  nothing  but  a  power  in  the  hands  of 
the  prince  to  provide  for  the  pubHc  good  in  such 
cases  which,  depending  upon  unforeseen  and  un- 
certain occurrences,  certain  and  unalterable  laws 
could  not  safely  direct '  (§  158). 

In  the  political  history  of  Britain  the  principles 
and  the  degree  of  relevancy  of  Lockism  have  their 
best  illustration  in  the  arguments  and  the  language 
used  by  both  Whigs  and  Tories  at  the  trial  of 
Sacheverell. 

^  Hobbes 's  Translation  of  Thucydides  :  '  To  the 
Readers  '  :  Hobbes's  English  Works,  ed.  by  Moles- 
worth,  vin.  iv. 

*  The  Catching  of  Leviathan  (1658),  intended  as 
a  sequel  to  the  Castigations,  p.  507  of  the  combined 
work,  and  written  *  to  let  him  [Hobbes]  see  the 
vanity  of  his  petulant  scoffs  and  empty  brags,  and 
how  open  he  doth  He  to  the  lash,  whensoever  any 
one  wQl  vouchsafe  to  take  him  in  hand  to  purpose ' 
(*  To  the  Christian  Reader  '). 

'  Adam  Smith's  Lectures  on  Justice,  Police, 
Revenue  and  Arms,  ed.  by  Cannan,  p.  11. 

^  See  Brougham's  Speeches,  ii.  609,  617,  quoted 


196      STUDIES  m  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

by   Dicey,   Law  and  Public   Opinion   in   England 
(1905),  pp.  184-5. 

»  Ibid.,  ii.  617. 

^®  *  I  am  now  protesting,'  said  Peel,  '  against  that 
unqualified  and  exceptionless  doctrine — namely, 
that  you  ought  to  treat  Canada  in  respect  to  colonial 
and  commercial  intercourse  on  the  same  footing  as 
other  countries.  If  such  a  proposition  be  enter- 
tained, there  is  an  end  at  once  to  our  colonial  empire, 
and  to  maintain  it  will  only  be  to  place  a  useless 
burden  on  ourselves.  If  you  sanction  this  pro- 
position, then  you  ought  also  to  say,  let  the  colonies 
assert  their  own  independence,  and  provide  for  their 
own  maintenance." — Speeches  (1853),  iv.  82  ;  see 
the  whole  speech,  13th  May  1842,  and  compare  with 
the  speech  on  the  Navigation  Laws,  iv.  761-70. 

^1  English  Historical  Review,  October  1888. 

^2  Cobbett's  Parliamentary  History  (1811),  vi 
1351-5. 

13  Ibid.,  vii.  585. 

1*  Ibid.,  vii.  914  ;  and  Coxe's  Memoirs  of  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  (1798),  i.  165-6. 

1^  Social  Contract,  bk.  i.  ch.  vii.  and  the  beginning 
of  ch.  viii. 

1^  Ibid.,  ii.  7.  For  the  general  subject  compare 
Montesquieu,  De  VEsprit  des  Lois,  liv.  xix.  ch.  xvi., 
xxi.  and  xxvii.,  and  de  Tocqueville,  De  la  Demo- 
cratic en  Amerique.  Meaning  by  '  manners  '  (mceurs, 
mores)  *  the  moral  and  intellectual  characteristics 
of  social  men  taken  collectively  * — *  the  practical 
experience,  habits,  opinions  '  of  men — Tocqueville 
argued  that  the  laws  contribute  more  to  the  mainten- 
ance of  the  democratic  republic  in  the  United  States 
than  the  physical  conditions  of  the  country,  and 
the  manners  than  the  laws. 

^'  E,g.  he  urges  caution  in  disturbing  the  liberum 


NOTES 


191 


veto.  a.  '  Quel  que  soit  celui  qu'on  adopters, 
Ton  ne  doit  pas  oublier  ce  que  j'ai  dit  dans  le  Contrat 
Social  de  Tetat  de  foiblesse  et  d'anarchie  ou  se 
trouve  une  nation,  tandis  qu'elle  etablit  ou  reforme 
sa  constitution.  Dans  ce  moment  de  d6sordre  et 
d'effervescence,  elle  est  hors  d'etat  de  faire  aucune 
resistance,  et  le  moindre  choc  est  capable  de  tout 
renverser . ' — Le  Gouvernement  de  Pologne,  ch .  xv.  *  Je 
ne  dis  pas  qu'il  faille  laisser  les  choses  dans  I'^tat 
ou  elles  sont ;  mais  je  dis  qu'il  n'y  faut  toucher 
qu'avec  une  circonspection  extreme.  En  ce  moment 
on  est  plus  frapp6  des  abus  que  des  avantages.' — ch.  i. 

1®  Oceana  and  Other  Works  of  James  Harrington 
(1747),  pp.  38,  278,  147. 

1*  See  Dicey,  Law  and  PvJblic  Opinion  in  England, 
pp.  302-9. 

2®  *  La  liberte  politique  ne  se  trouve  que  dans  les 
gouvemements  moderes.  Mais  eUe  n'est  pas  tou- 
jours  dans  les  Etats  moderes  :  eUe  n'y  est  que 
lorsqu'on  n'abuse  pas  du  pouvoir  ;  mais  c'est  une 
experience  etemelle,  que  tout  homme  qui  a  du 
pouvoir  est  porte  a  en  abuser  ;  il  va  jusqu'  a  ce  qu'il 
trouve  des  limites.  .  .  .  Pour  qu'on  ne  puisse 
abuser  du  pouvoir,  il  faut  que,  par  la  disposition 
des  choses,  le  pouvoir  arrete  le  pouvoir.' — De 
VEsprit  des  Lois,  liv.  xi.  ch.  iv. 

Cf .  *  Comme  dans  les  democraties  le  peuple  parait 
a  peu  pres  faire  ce  qu'il  veut,  on  a  mis  la  liberte  dans 
ces  sortes  de  gouvemements,  et  on  a  confondu  le 
pouvoir  du  peuple  avec  la  liberte  du  peuple.' — ch.  ii. 

See  the  third  quotation,  p.  62  supra,  from  Burke. 


FREDERIC  WILLIAM  MAITLAND 

1  S.   R.  Maitland,  Essays  on  Subjects  connected 
with  the  Reformation  in  England  (reprinted   1849), 
p.  198.     Readers  of  F.  W.  Maitland  to  whom  these 
Essays  are  known   (and  they  still  deserve  to  be 
widely  known),  will   have  observed   the   alertness 
of   mind   and  freedom   in  style  common  to  both 
writers.    The   following   passage  from   a   footnote 
to   Essay   x.    ('  The  Puritan   Palinodia '  :    Essays, 
p.  199)  might  have  been  written  by  F.  W.  Maitland  : 
the  reference  is  to  Limborch  (1633-1712),  author 
of  a  History  of  the  Inquisition  :    *  Limborch  was  a 
man  of  the  right  sort,  which  was  much  more  impor- 
tant than  that  he  should  know  about  the  Inquisi- 
tion.    So  he  made  a  great  book,  and  prefixed  a 
fierce  dedication  to  Archbishop  Tillotson  assuring 
his  Grace,  and  all  other  readers,  in  great  words, 
and  great  letters,  that  he  had  in  the  great  book 
thoroughly    exposed    Popery   in   its    true    colours, 
and  that  they  might  make  up  their  minds  on  that 
subject,  before  they  set  out  on  their  journey  of 
some  eight  hundred  folio  pages  of  Latin,  supposing 
that  they  had  any  idea  of  encountering  that  fatigue. 
What  was  to  have  been  an  introductory  treatise  to 
**  The  Book  of  Sentences  "  grew,  as  the  author  learned 
his  lesson,  into  the  more  ambitious  form  and  title  of 
**  Historia  Inquisitionis." ' 

2  Pubhshed  in  Lectures  on  Medieval  and  Modern 
History  (1887). 

192 


NOTES 


193 


3  See  Maitland's  article  on  Stubbs  in  the  English 
Historical  Review  (1901),  xvi.  417  sqq. 

*  Edward  Leigh,  A  Treatise  of  Religion  and 
Learning  (1656),  p.  322. 

^  See  also  the  *  concluding  reflexions '  in  the 
third  volume  of  the  Constitutional  History  of  Eng- 
landy  where  ('  at  the  close  of  so  long  a  book  ')  Bishop 
Stubbs  '  may  be  suffered  to  morahse.'  Eight  years 
earUer  (1870),  in  the  Preface  to  the  Select  Charters, 
he  had  uttered  a  firm  and  telling  plea  for  the  study 
of  constitutional  history  as  '  a  recognized  part  of 
a  regular  EngUsh  education.' 

«  *  The  EngUsh,  like  the  Continental  village  com- 
munity, .  .  .  inhabited  a  shell — an  open-field  system 
— into  the  nooks  and  corners  of  which  it  was  curiously 
bound  and  fitted,  and  from  which  it  was  apparently 
inseparable.  The  remains  of  this  cast-off  shell  still 
survive  in  parishes  where  no  Enclosure  Act  happens 
to  have  swept  them  away.  .  .  .  The  method  pur- 
sued in  this  Essay  will  be,  first,  to  become  famiUar 
with  the  Uttle  distinctive  marks  and  traits  of  the 
EngUsh  open-field  system  .  .  .  ;  and  then,  pro- 
ceeding from  the  known  to  the  unknown,  carefuUy 
to  trace  back  the  sheU  by  searching  and  watching 
for  its  marks  and  traits  as  far  into  the  past  as 
evidence  can  be  found.' — Seebohm,  English  Village 
Community  (1883),  pp.  xUi-xiv.  Many  students  of 
economic  history  have  had  their  interest  first 
awakened  by  this  book  ;  and  the  interdependence 
between  the  economic  and  the  constitutional  (and 
'poUtical')  history  of  England  has  come  to  be 
much  more  widely  recognised,  and  is  much  less 
insecurely  estabUshed,  since  Mr.  Seebohm,  Dr.  Gross, 
and  Dr.  Cunningham  and  a  few  others  had  their 
first  hopes  and  expectations.  Maitland  teUs  us 
that  the  title  Domesday  Book  and  Beyond  was  chosen 

N 


f    il 


-I 

I    $1 


\    n 


194     STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

for  the  purpose  of  indicating  that  he  had  followed 
*  that  retrogressive  method  *'  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown  "  of  which  Mr.  Seebohm  is  the  apostle. 
The  Beyond  is  still  very  dark  :  but  the  way  to  it 
hes  through  the  Norman  record.  That  in  some 
sort  I  have  been  endeavouring  to  answer  Mr.  See- 
bohm, I  cannot  conceal  from  myself  or  from  others.' 
— Domesday  Book  and  Beyond,  Preface. 

'  See,  e.g.,  '  The  History  of  EngUsh  Law  as  a 
Branch  of  PoUtics  '  in  Essays  in  Jurisprvdence  and 
Ethics  (1882),  and  *  EngHsh  Opportunities  in  His- 
torical and  Comparative  Jurisprudence  '   (1883)  in 
Oxford  Lectures  and  other  Discourses  (1890). 
^  See  Preface  to  Bracton's  Note-Book  (1887). 
^  Maitland  tells  us  in  1895  that  he  was  no  '  in- 
structed Romanist ' — that  he  acquired  his  know- 
ledge of  Roman  Law  late  in  Hfe  and  *  painfully ' 
(Bracton  and  Azo,  p.  xxxiii.).     Maine   in  Ancient 
Law,   ch.  iv.,  had  written  of — had   written — '  the 
plagiarisms  of  Bracton.'     '  That  an  English  writer 
of  the  time  of  Henry  in.  should  have  been  able  to 
put  off  on  his  countrymen  as  a  compendium  of 
pure  EngUsh  law  a  treatise  of  which  the  entire  form 
and  a  third  of  the  contents  are  borrowed  directly 
from  the  Corps  Juruis,  and  that  he  should  have 
ventured  on  this  experiment  in  a  country  where 
the  systematic  study  of  the  Roman  law  was  formally 
proscribed,  will  always  be  among  the  most  hopeless 
enigmas  in  the  history  of  jurisprudence.'    This,  says 
Maitland,  Bracton  and  Azo,  p.  xiv.,  is  a  '  stupend- 
ous exaggeration.'     *  The   amount  of   matter   that 
Bracton  directly  derived  from  the  Corpus  luris  is 
not  one-third,  is  not  a  thirtieth  part  of  his  book. 
The  amount  of  matter  that  Bracton  borrowed  from 
Azo  is  larger  ;    it  may  perhaps  amount  in  all  to  a 
fifteenth  of  the  treatise.'     See  page  xxiv  :    *  Nor  is 


NOTES 


195 


it  for  one  moment  suggested  that  Bracton  and  his 
predecessor  Glanville  derived  no  benefit  from  the 
books  of  the  legists  and  canonists.  On  the  contrary, 
the  benefit  that  they  derived  was  inestimably 
great.  They  learnt  how  to  write  about,  how  to 
think  about,  law,  and  besides  this  they  acquired 
some  fertile  ideas,  distinctions  and  maxims,  which 
they  made  their  own  and  our  own.  In  a  very  true 
sense,  Bracton  is  most  Roman,  not  when  he  is 
copying  from  the  Institutes  or  from  Azo's  Summa, 
but  when  he  is  studying  his  Note  Book,  when  he  is 
weaving  a  doctrine  out  of  the  plea  rolls,  when  he 
is  dealing  with  the  judgments  of  PateshuU  and 
Raleigh  as  Azo  had  dealt  with  the  opinions  of 
Ulpian  and  Paulus,  or  the  glosses  of  Martin  and 
Placentin.  It  is  then  that  we  see  what  the  revived 
jurisprudence  of  Rome  has  done  for  EngUsh  law. 
But  in  order  that  we  may  intelligently  admire 
Bracton's  best  work  we  must  know  his  worst  also. 
When  he  uses  an  ItaUan  book  as  a  model,  he  does 
Avell  ;  when  he  uses  it  as  a  "  crib,"  he  does  ill.' 
*  But  he  did  no  wrong.  A  literary  communism 
prevailed.  .  .  .  Otherwise  it  might  be  at  Bologna, 
where  already  there  was  strenuous  competition  for 
students  and  for  fees.  Here  in  England  there  was 
no  such  struggle,  and  therefore  there  was  no  legal 
or  moral  copyright  in  a  law-book.'  It  is  the  same 
with  the  historians,  *  and  yet  we  do  not  accuse 
Florence  and  Hoveden,  Wendover  and  Paris,  of 
*'  putting  oft" "  and  "  venturing."  ' — Op.  cit.,  p.  xxviii. 
Cf.  Pollock's  Note  in  his  edition  of  Ancient  Law, 
pp.  116-17. 

1^  Bracton  and  Azo,  p.  x.  See  Pollock  and  Maitland, 
History  of  English  Law,  i.  185,  for  what  is  known  of 
Bracton's  life. 

^1  *  In   the  summer   of   1884   Paul   Vinogradoff, 


196     STTTDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

Professor  of  History  in  the  University  of  Moscow, 
was  in  England  seeking  materials  for  mediaeval 
history.  A  study  of  the  EngHsh  manor  led  him  to 
a  study  of  Brae  ton's  text,  and  he  went  behind  that 
text  to  Bracton's  authorities.  He  then  heard  .  .  . 
of  a  MS.  at  the  British  Museum  known  as  MS. 
Additional  12,269.  Carefully  reading  it  he  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  closely  connected 
with  Bracton's  work  and  indeed  was  probably 
Bracton's  own  note  book.  This  discovery  he  pub- 
lished to  the  world  in  The  Atheticeuvi  for  19  July 
ISS^,'— Bracton's  Note-Book,  p.  12. 

12  Op.  cit.,  last  words  of  Preface. 

13  Ibid.,  p.  120. 

1*  See  the  opening  words  of  his  Introduction  to 
Select  Pleas  of  the  Croimi.  There  is  nothing,  how- 
ever, in  the  rules  of  the  Selden  Society  to  forbid 
the  '  modern  dissertation,'  although  the  primary 
objects  are  '  the  publication  of  original  documents 
and  the  reprinting  or  editing  of  works  of  sufficient 
rarity  or  importance  '  in  the  history  of  English  la^v. 

1^  Cf .  Year  Books  of  Edward  //.,  vol.  i.  p.  ix :  *  When 
all  has  been  said  that  it  is  fair  to  say  of  England's 
wealth  of  legal  records,  the  truth  remains  that  the 
history  of  English  laAv  from  the  days  of  Edward  i. 
to  the  days  of  Edward  vii.  must  be  primarily  sought, 
not  in  records  properly  so  called,  but  in  reports. 
To  this  may  be  added  tliat  in  the  way  of  intellectual 
],)roducts  medieval  England  had  nothing  more 
})urely  English  to  show  than  its  law  reports,  its 
Year  Books.'  They  have  a  *  unique  position  in 
the  history  of  jurisprudence,  in  the  history  of 
civiHsation,  in  the  history  of  mankind.' — Op.  cit., 
p.  xvi. 

16  <  W^hile  as  yet  there  was  little  science  and  no 
popular  science,  the  lawyer  mediated  between  the 


NOTES 


197 


abstract  Latin  logic  of  the  schoolmen  and  the  con- 
crete needs  and  homely  talk  of  gross,  unschooled 
mankind.  Law  was  the  point  where  life  and  logic 
met.' — Ibid.,  p.  xxxiii.     Cf.  p.  Ixxxi. 

1'  '  When  many  are  edited  as  Mr  Pike  has  edited 
a  few,  no  student  of  English  history  will  dare  to 
neglect  them.  .  .  .  These  Year  Books  are  a  precious 
heritage.  They  come  to  us  from  Hfe.  Some  day 
they  will  return  to  life  once  more  at  the  touch  of 
some  great  historian.' — Ibid.,  p.  xx. 

18  The  History  of  English  Law,  i.  185  :  '  The  Age 
of  Bracton.'  '  Romanesque  in  form,  English  in 
substance — this  perhaps  is  the  best  brief  phrase 
that  we  can  find  for  the  outcome  of  his  labours  ; 
but  yet  it  is  not  a  very  good  phrase.'— /6i*c/.,  p.  186. 

1^  Maitland  uses  the  word  more  than  once  of  the 
Norman  Conquest :  for  economic  relations,  for  the 
framework  and  the  strength  of  government  in  Eng- 
land, for  the  history  of  law,  it  is  a  '  catastrophe ' — 
a  great  turning-event.  *  It  is  a  catastrophe  which 
determines  the  whole  future  history  of  English 
law.' — History  of  English  Law,  i.  57. 

2®  Much  of  what  has  been  achieved  by  the  labours 
of  scholars  like  Maitland,  Dr.  Horace  Round,  and 
Professor  Vinogradoff,  is  incorporated  in  works 
published  within  recent  years,  a  few  of  them 
(e.g.,  M.  Charles  Petit -Dutaillis'  Studies)  designed 
to  '  supplement  '  Stubbs.  But  the  best  antidote  to 
the  poisonous  doctrine  that  Stnhbs  is  *  out  of  date  ' 
is  administered  by  Maitland  himself  in  his  apprecia- 
tion of  the  historian  in  the  English  Historical  Review. 
Stubbs  is,  at  least,  still  a  fruitful  '  starting-point,' 
if  no  longer  a  *  summing-up.' 

21  History  of  English  Law,  ii.  670. 

22  Lectures  on  Medieval  and  Modern  History,  p.  433. 
2^  *  The  academic  study  of  the  canon  law  was 


198     STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

prohibited.  No  step  that  Henry  took  was  more 
momentous.  He  cut  the  very  life  thread  of  the 
old  learning.  The  ecclesiastical  judges  in  time  to 
come  might  administer  such  of  the  ancient  rules 
as  were  not  contrariant  nor  repugnant  to  the  laws 
(newly  interpreted)  of  God  and  the  statutes  of  our 
lord  the  king  ;  but  they  would  not  have  been,  like 
their  predecessors  in  time  past,  steeped  and  soaked 
for  many  a  year  in  the  papal  law-books  and  their 
ultra-papal  glosses.  And,  as  if  this  were  not  enough, 
Henry  encouraged  and  endowed  the  study  of  the 
"  civil  law,"  and  the  unhallowed  civilian  usurped  the 
place  of  the  canonist  on  the  bench.  ...  If  Henry 
was  minded  to  be  "  the  pope,  the  whole  pope,  and 
something  more  than  pope "  (Stubbs,  Seventeen 
Lectures,  p.  262),  he  might  trust  the  civilians  to  place 
the  triple  and  every  other  Crown  upon  his  head.' — 
Roman  Canon  Law  in  the  Church  of  England  (1898), 
pp.  92-4. 

24  Ibid.,  p.  120  :  23  Hen.  viii.  c.  9  :  'An  Act  that 
no  person  shall  be  cited  out  of  the  diocese  where  he 
or  she  dwelleth,  except  in  certain  cases.' 

25  *  Last  year,  being  sent  from  England,  I  was 
encouraged  to  undertake  this  translation  by  Pro- 
fessor Henry  Sidgwick.  What  encouragement  was 
like  when  it  came  from  him,  his  pupils  are  now 
sorrowfully  remembering.' — Political  Theories  of  the 
Middle  Age,  xlv.  f.n.  5. 

2«  See  Stevenson,  Asser's  Life  of  King  Alfred,  note 
on  c.  106;  and  History  of  English  Law,  i.  17  and 
ii.  661.  *  Asser  represents  Alfred  as  inquiring  into 
the  correctness  of  his  sheriffs'  and  ealdormen's  legal 
decisions,  and  threatening  them  with  removal  for 
their  ignorance  of  the  law.  But  as  Mr.  Kemble  has 
pointed  out,  it  is  nowhere  intimated  that  Alfred 
assiuned  the  power  to  reverse  those  decisions,  or 


NOTES 


199 


that  he  attempted  to  create  any  judicial  system 
more  satisfactory  than  the  one  which,  by  common 
consent,  even  in  his  time,  was  utterly  unequal  to 
the  public  wants.  .  .  .  Even  then,  if  the  king  con- 
sented to  hear  a  complaint  of  denial  of  justice,  his 
power  of  redress  seems  to  have  gone  no  further  than 
to  send  the  case  back  to  the  ealdorman  or  sheriff, 
with  the  threat  of  punishment  if  justice  were  still 
denied ;  or,  what  was  probably  more  usual,  to 
negotiate  an  extra-judicial  compromise  between  the 
parties.' — Essays  in  Anglo-Saxon  Law  (1876),  pp.  25-6. 
Stubbs  had  written  two  years  earlier.  Constitutional 
History,  i.  439 :  *  The  Anglo-Saxon  kings  heard 
causes  in  person  :  the  judgment  of  the  king  was  the 
last  resort  of  the  litigant  who  had  failed  to  obtain 
justice  in  the  hundred  and  the  shire.' 

2'  Not  901,  but  either  899  or  900  :  see  Steven- 
son, English  Historical  Review,  xiii.  71.  The  error 
of  accepting  901  has  been  due  to  the  misplace- 
ment of  a  marginal  year  in  the  Chronicles.  With 
allowance  made  for  this,  the  evidence  of  the 
Chronicles  themselves  would  be  for  900,  the  reign 
having  been  one  of  twenty-eight  and  a  half  years. 
Mr.  Stevenson  decided  for  899  owing  to  the  additional 
fact  that  Ethelward,  the  Chronicler,  states  that 
Edward  the  Elder  was  crowned  on  Whitsunday 
(June  8),  900.  The  month  of  Alfred's  death- 
October — is  not  in  dispute. 

28  In  the  English  Historical  Review,  viii.  (1893), 
1-17,  Professor  Vinogradoff  pointed  out  that  the 
analogy  of  other  compound  words  of  which  folk  is 
a  part  does  not  support  the  interpretation  of  '  folk- 
land  '  as  implying  possession  by  the  folk,  and, 
further,  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  documents  to 
support  such  interpretation.  Folk-land,  in  dis- 
tinction from  book-land,  is  '  land  held  by  a  public 


200     STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

title,  proceeding  from  the  folk,  under  special  obliga- 
tions to  the  state  and  to  the  king.'— Growth  of  the 
Manor  (1905),  p.  244  :  it  is  terra  leiyaUicae  iuris  (see 
references  to  two  charters  of  Cenwulf  cited  by 
Vinogradoff,  op.  cit.)—'  a  sounding  expression  which 
can  hardly  have  meant  anything  else  ' — Vinogradoff, 
English  Society  in  the  Eleventh  Centunj  (1908),  p.  256. 
See  Domesday  Book  and  Beyond,  pp.  244-258,  and 
History  of  English  Law,  i.  40,  in  support  of  this 
return  to  Spelman's  interpretation  in  place  of  that 
of  Allen :  *  the  land  of  the  people  ...  as  the  word 
imports.'— i?02/aZ  Prerogative  (1830),  p.  143,  where 
Spelman  is  quoted  in  a  footnote  :  Cf .  Freeman, 
Norman  Conquest,  3rd  ed.,  i.  84  :  '  The  folkland  of 
England  and  the  ager  puhlicus  of  Rome  are  the 
same  thing.  To  Mr.  Allen  .  .  .  belongs  the  honour 
of  having   explained  what  folkland  and  hookland 

really  are.' 

2»  Mr.  Ej^on's  Key  to  Domesday  was  pubhshed 

in  1878. 

30  <  Terras  autem  (rex  Willelmus)  mihtibus  ita 
distribuit,  et  eorum  ordines  ita  disposuit,  ut  Angliae 
regnum  LX  millia  militum  indesinentur  haberet,  ac 
ad  imperium  regis,  prout  ratio  proposcerit,  celeriter 
exhiberet.'— Ordericus  Vitalis,  Eccles.  Hist.,  lib. 
iv.  c.  7.  *  A  whole  army  was  .  .  .  camped  upon  the 
soil,  and  the  King's  summons  could  at  any  moment 
gather  sixty  thousand  knights  to  the  royal  standard.' 
—Green,  Short  History  of  the  English  People, 
c.  ii.  s.  5.  *  Making  every  allowance,  we  shall 
probably  be  safe  in  saying  that  the  whole  servitium 
dehitum,  clerical  and  lay,  of  England  can  scarcely 
have  exceeded,  if  indeed  it  ever  reached,  5000 
knights.'— Round,  Feudal  England,  p.  292.  Cf. 
Domesday  Book,  pp.  510-11.  *  Sixty  thousand'  is 
frequently   used   by   the   Chroniclers    for   a   large 


NOTES 


201 


number.  On  *  Chroniclers'  Estimates  of  Numbers,' 
see  references  in  Sir  James  H.  Ramsay's  article, 
Eng.  Hist.  Review,  xviii  (1903),  626-9.  Mr.  Round 
makes  the  total  of  the  EngUsh  at  Bannockbum 
21,540 — The  Commune  of  England,  pp.  289  sqq.  A 
duty  is  now  imposed  on  Scottish  investigators. 

^1  See  Feudal  England,  pp.  225  sqq.,  258-62. 

^2  Mr.  Round  was  the  first  to  show  the  signifi- 
cance of  these  formal  returns  (cartae)  made  to  the 
exchequer  by  the  king's  tenants-in-chief,  and  he 
regards  them  as  the  best  starting-point  for  an 
inquiry  into  the  origin  and  gro\\i:h  of  miUtary 
tenure.  On  the  old  and  the  new  feoffment,  see 
Feudal  England,  pp.  237-9,  258,  296.  '  The  dividing 
line  between  the  "  old  "  and  the  "  new  "  feoffments 
was  the  death  of  Henry  i.  in  1135.  All  fees  existing 
at  that  date  were  of  the  antiquum  feoffamentum  ; 
all  fees  created  subsequently  were  of  the  novum 
feoffamentum.' — The  Commune  of  London,  p.  59.  ['  De 
Feoffamento  veteri  et  novo.  These  phrases  began 
in  the  reign  of  Hen.  ii.,  when  those  knights  or 
mihtary  tenants  who  had  been  enfeoffed  in  any 
fees  or  parts  of  a  fee  at  or  before  the  death  of 
K.  Henr.  i.  were  said  tenere  feoda  de  veteri  feoffa- 
mento. But  those  who  were  infeoffed  in  their  lands 
after  the  death  of  the  said  king,  they  were  said 
tenere  de  novo  feoffamejito.' — Co  well,  The  Interpreter, 
ed.  1708 — a  work  still  of  value  for  much  besides 
a  definition  of  Prcerogativa  Regis,  even  although 
according  to  Royal  Proclamation  ('  there  being 
nothing  now  unsearched  unto  by  the  curiosity  of 
men's  brains  ')  '  he  hath  fallen  in  many  things  to 
mistake  and  deceive  himseK.']  The  '  cardinal 
facts '  are  thus  summed  up  by  Vinogradoff,  English 
Society,  p.  42  :  *  We  know  from  the  comparison  of  the 
returns  of  1166  as  to  the  number  of  knights'  fees 


202     STUDIES  IN  BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

held  from  the  different  baronies,  that  there  were 
three  kinds  of  knight  service  at  that  time  :  that 
from  the  old  fees  (antiquum  feoff  amentum)  y  created 
in  the  reigns  of  the  three  Norman  kings,  that  of  the 
new  fees  (de  novo,  novum  feoffamentum),  instituted 
after  Henry  i.'s  reign,  and  that  of  the  knights  not 
enfeoffed  with  particular  estates  but  maintained 
on  the  domain  ' — super  dominium — '  of  the  barony. 
The  first  and  third  category  were  drawn  together 
in  respect  of  the  feudal  obHgations  of  the  barony  ; 
they  represented  the  original  service  due  from  it, 
its  "  servicium  debitum."  The  second  category 
arose  from  the  policy  of  subinfeudation  carried  on 
by  the  barons  on  their  own  account,  and  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  original  "  due  service,"  but  Henry  ii. 
asserted  a  right  to  exact  military  service  or  its 
substitute,  scutage,  and  the  other  eventual  privileges 
of  an  overlord  in  regard  to  these  fees  constituted 
in  excess  of  "  due  service,"  as  well  as  in  regard  to 
the  original  fees.'  When  the  number  of  knights' 
fees  created  was  less  than  sufficient  to  discharge  the 
*  service,'  the  adverse  balance  was  charged  on  the 
demesne — the  non-infeudated  part  of  the  fief : 
see  Round,  Feudal  England,  pp.  238-9. 

33  Almost  all  recent  commentary  on  Magna  Carta 
has  tended  to  diminish  the  historical  aptness  of  the 
well-known  words  of  Stubbs  (C.  H.,  i.  ch.  xii.  §  155), 
that  '  the  Great  Charter  is  the  first  great  act  of  the 
nation  after  it  has  realised  its  own  identity,'  although 
it  may  be  said  that,  in  emphasising  the  strict, 
technical  and  at  times  lawyerly  interpretation  of 
words  and  articles  and  the  feudal  setting  in  general, 
we  are  in  danger  of  not  allowing  to  the  historian 
all  that  he  himself  would  have  claimed  for  two 
of  his  own  tests— (1)  that  *  the  words  of  the  charter, 
to  be  carried  out  at  all,  involved  much  more  than 


NOTES 


203 


they  expressed '  {8,  C,  p.  30) ;  and  (2) '  neither  John's 
tyranny  nor  its  overthrow  could  have  taken  the  form 
they  took  without  the  reforms  of  Henry  ii.'  (Ibid., 
p.  270). 

That  the  king  is  under  '  the  law  '  is  a  fundamental 
of  the  Charter,  and  yet  this  fundamental  cannot 
be  read,  amid  the  conditions  of  1215,  as  a  safeguard 
of  a  '  people's  '  Hberties  :  the  king  might  be  for  the 
people  (that  was  his  '  officium  ')  ;  the  law,  expressed 
in  laws  or  conditioned  by  their  silence,  might  be 
for  barons,  having  power  but  not  for  the  common 
good  (to  which  the  medieval  thinker,  like  the 
modem,  made  appeal).  But,  with  relativity  to  the 
age  as  an  essential  test,  and  partly  to  quaHfy  its 
force  in  our  estimate  of  the  Charter  of  1215,  must 
be  taken  the  comprehensiveness  of  the  provisions 
for  an  age  still  feudal.  Three  conditions,  it  may 
be  urged,  made  for  a  wider  interpretation  of  Magna 
Carta  than  that  given  to  it  in  1215  and  intended  for 
it  by  the  main  body  of  its  promoters  :  ( 1 )  economic 
England  was  developing  beyond  the  feudal  stage — 
the  stage  to  which  a  feudal  jurisdiction  is  relevant ; 

(2)  the  administrative  reforms  of  Henry  ii.,  due 
to  necessity  and  developed  from  policy — with  a 
risk  of  stringency  that  is  to  be  deemed  inseparable 
from  it  rather  than  impolitic — were  too  broadly 
based  to  tolerate  a  feudal  bias  and  superiority  ; 

(3)  the  gains  achieved  by  the  barons  against  the 
kingship  under  John  could  be  pointed  to  by  the 
later  *  community  ' — could  be  adapted  by  a  broader 
community  when  the  terms  had  lost  their  feudal 
significance  by  passing  out  of  their  historical  setting. 
Much  of  the  development  of  English  rights  and 
EngHsh  interests  has  been  effected  through  such 
adaptation  of  old  gains  to  new  and  unforeseen  situa- 
tions ;  it  is  the  EngHsh  standard  for  appreciating 


204     STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 

the  past  in  the  present  of  the  politics  of  the  several 
ages — a  standard  that  has  its  pitfalls  in  historical 
estimate. 

3*  For  the  departure  from  the  old  interpretation 
of  legale  iudicium  parium,  see  Select  Pleas  in  Manorial 
Courts  (1889),  Ixvii.  and  footnotes,  and  Hist,  of 
Eng.  Law,  i.  151  :  '  Even  in  the  most  famous  words 
of  the  charter  we  may  detect  a  feudal  claim  which 
will  only  cease  to  be  dangerous,  when  in  course  of 
time  men  have  distorted  its  meaning  :  a  man  is 
entitled  to  the  judgment  of  his  peers  :  the  king's 
justices  are  no  peers  for  earls  or  barons '  (cf .  Round, 
Geoffrey  de  Mandeville,  for  feudal  claim  and  exercise 
of  claim).  *  The  judgement  of  peers,'  wrote  Mr. 
Pike  in  the  same  year  (1895),  Constitutional  History 
of  the  House  of  Lords,  pp.  170-1, '  in  the  case  of  persons 
holding  their  lands  not  directly  of  the  Crown,  but 
of  a  mesne  lord,  was  the  judgement  of  the  other 
tenants  of  that  lord,  who  owed  suit  to  the  same 
Court,  and  were  in  that  respect  all  peers  or  equals. 
.  .  .  The  Peers  of  the  Court  (Pares  Curiae  or  Pares 
Curtis)  were  known  wherever  the  feudal  system 
prevailed.' 

^^  For  the  general  sense  of  lex  terrae  (lex  regni)  see 
History  of  English  Law,  i.  154  ;  for  an  interpretation 
of  the  words  as  procedure  see  Pike,  op.  cit.,  p.  170  : 
*  The  law  of  the  land  included  all  legal  proceedings, 
criminal  or  civil,  other  than  the  judgement  of  peers. 
The  judgement  of  peers  had  reference  chiefly  to 
the  right  of  landholders  to  their  lands,  or  to  some 
matters  connected  with  feudal  tenure  and  its 
incidents.'  See  also  McKechnie,  Magna  Carta 
(1905),  on  article  39.  M.  Ch.  Petit-Dutaillis,  who 
since  1894  has  stood  pronouncedly  for  the  reaction 
from  the  *  national '  interpretation  of  the  Charter, 
rejects  the  view  that  the  design  in  article  39  was  to 


NOTES 


205 


thwart  the  professional  judges,  and  he  gives  to  lex 
terrae  the  wider  interpretation  :  it  is  '  doubtless 
the  custom  of  the  realm  in  a  general  sense.'  See 
his  Studies  and  Notes  supplementary  to  Stubbs'  C.  H. 
(trans.  1908),  pp.  136-7,  f.n.  The  ordinary  interpreta- 
tion of  lex  terrae  (even  as  in  article  39,  in  and  for 
1215)  current  a  little  over  twenty  years  ago  was 
luminously  expressed  and  suggestively  applied  by 
Mr.  E.  J.  Phelps  (U.S.A.  Ambassador)  in  his  Address 
at  Edinburgh  on  '  The  Law  of  the  Land  '  (1886  : 
published  1887)  :  e.g.,  '  In  the  Magna  Charta  of 
King  John,  the  most  significant  expression  in  its 
most  celebrated  clause,  appears  a  phrase  familiar 
now,  unknown  till  then,  "  per  legem  terrce  " — by 
the  law  of  the  land.  It  indicates  there  at  once  the 
criterion  and  the  bulwark  of  the  liberties  of  English- 
men, and,  with  its  context,  introduces  for  the  first 
time  into  the  theory  of  civil  government,  and 
crystallises  into  language  not  destined  to  perish, 
the  idea  long  moulding  and  shaping  in  the  unlettered 
Saxon  mind, — that  human  rights  are  the  foundation, 
and  not  the  concession,  of  human  authority.  .  .  . 
The  term  ' — the  Law  of  the  Land — '  is  often  made 
use  of  in  a  vague  way,  as  including  all  the  law  which 
has  force  or  is  administered  in  the  country.  I  do 
not  so  understand  it.  I  regard  it  ...  as  em- 
bracing only  that  which  is  fundamental.  I  con- 
ceive the  law  of  the  land  to  be  the  law  that  runs 
with  the  land,  and  descends  with  the  land  .  .  .  ; 
that  higher  law  under  which  legislation  itself  obtains 
its  authority  and  courts  their  jurisdiction.  It  was 
in  this  sense,  beyond  doubt,  that  the  words  were 
employed  in  Magna  Charta.  Otherwise  the  guarantee 
of  personal  liberty  there  contained  would  altogether 
lose  its  force.' — The  Law  of  the  Land,  p.  1.  *  The 
American  constitution  declares  that  *'  no  man  shall 


206     STITBIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND  POLITICS 

be  deprived  of  life,  liberty,  or  property,  without 
due  process  of  law."  And  that  "  no  State  shall  pass 
any  law  impairing  the  obligation  of  contracts."  The 
words  "  due  process  of  law"  have  been  held,  both 
in  England  and  America,  to  be  precisely  equivalent 
in  their  significance  to  the  phrase  in  the  Magna 
Charta,  "the  law  of  the  land."  '—Op.  cit.,  p.  11. 
Cf.  ConMitutional  History  of  the  United  States  as  seen 
in  the  Development  of  American  Law  (Lectures  by 
Judge  T.  M.  Cooley  and  others,  1889),  pp.  230-1 
(Charles  A.  Kent) :  '  The  provision  that  no  State 
shall  deprive  any  person  of  life,  liberty,  or  property 
without  due  process  of  law,  has  given  rise  to  a  great 
deal  of  Htigation.  It  is  found  in  substance  in 
Magna  Charta.  .  .  .  The  chief  difficulty  is  in  the 
words  "  due  process  of  law,"  and  especially  in  the 

word  "  due."  ' 

3»  This  article  is  the  most  distinctly  feudal  article 
in  the  Charter  :  it  is  the  most  retrogressive,  if 
progress  be  measured  by  the  advance  made  by  the 
king's  court  (for  a  State)  at  the  expense  of  the  lords' 
courts  (for  privileges  and  powers,  partly  and  inher- 
ently in  part,  antagonistic  to  the  interests  of  a  State 
that  had  still  to  struggle  for  recognition).  Maitland, 
in  1888,  Select  Pleas  in  Manorial  Courts,  p.  liv,  in 
writing  of  possessory  assizes  under  Henry  ii.  in 
relation  to  the  conflict  of  the  two  jurisdictions, 
ventured  so  far  as  the  following  :  '  Perhaps  the 
greatest  event  in  the  history  of  EngHsh  law  is  that 
Henry  ii.  cast  his  protection  over  possession,  made 
the  disturbance  of  seisin  a  cause  for  complaint  to 
the  king  himself.' 

3'  Article  61.  Cf.  Confirmation  of  the  Charters, 
1265  (Stubbs,  Select  Charters) :  '  ,  .  ,  liceat  omnibus 
de  regno  nostro  contra  nos  insurgere  et  ad  gravamen 
nostrum  opem  et  operam  dare  juxta  posse.'     The 


NOTES 


207 


difficulties  of  the  king,  especially  of  one  not  in  power, 
were  the  opportunity  of  the  Opposition  ;  and  in 
this  situation  in  1215,  where  there  was  a  combination, 
or  merely  a  temporary  convergence,  of  interests,  the 
support  of  theory  or  doctrine  was  readily  available. 
The  pohtical  origin,  however,  of  the  clause,  as  an 
enunciation  or  acceptance  of  a  right  of  rebeUion, 
or,  rather,  a  repudiation  of  unrestrained  power,  or 
as  a  mere  stumbling  after  a  practical  sovereignty, 
must  be  sought  chiefly  in  the  general  reasoning  and 
standpoints  of  the  time — in  these  more  than  in 
particular  and  pressing  exigencies.  Pohtical  doc- 
trine was  in  advance  of  pohtical  method — in  advance 
of  the  economy  of  '  the  State  ' — of  a  State  which 
had  not  yet  the  attributes  of  a  true  State  :  in  1215, 
as  in  1258,  it  was  hard  to  know  how  to  contribute 
impartially  and  equably  '  ad  honorem  Dei  et  ad 
fidem  nostram  ac  regni  nostri  utihtatem.'  ('The 
King's  Consent  to  the  Election  of  the  Twenty-four ' — 
Stubbs,  /S.  C,  p.  381.) 

(1)  Power  for  the  medievahst  is  power  to  do 
good. 

(2)  The  Church  (in  its  conflict  for  supremacy) 
advanced  the  rights  of  the  community  as  superior 
to  those  of  a  king  who,  when  not  ruling  aright, 
became  a  tyrant ;  and  already  in  Henry  ii.'s  reign 
John  of  Sahsbury — a  pohtical  extremist — had 
formally  enunciated  a  doctrine  of  tyrannicide 
(whereas,  by  article  61  of  Magna  Carta,  the  personal 
security  of  the  king  and  that  of  his  queen  and  his 
children  were  guaranteed). 

*  King,'  for  the  Church,  might  be  construed  as  a 
mere  vocahulum  officii,  as  by  Manegold  of  Lautenbach, 
c.  1085  :  the  king  has  obhgations  and  may  incur 
penalties  :  if  he  is  false  to  a  trust — ^guilty  of  a 
breach  of  contract — are  not  the  people  absolved 


n 


fi 


208     STUDIES   IN   BRITISH   HISTORY   AND   POLITICS. 

from  subjection  to  him  ?  '  Nonne  clarum  est, 
merito  ilium  a  concessa  dignitate  cadere,  populum 
ab  eius  dominio  liberum  existere,  cum  pactum  pro 
quo  constitutus  est  constat  ilium  prius  irrupisse  ? 
—Manegold,  quoted  by  Gierke,  Political  Theories  of 
the  Middle  Age,  p.  146  (Note  138). 

Kingship  within  a  feudal  economy— kmgship  as 
mere  suzerainty— rests  on  a  contract ;  and  there  is 
a  right  of  diffidatio.  The  political  principle  under- 
lying feudahsm  is  the  reciprocity  of  rights  and 
duties,  and  in  the  absence  of  the  State  principle  and 
of  State  power  it  provides  feudahsm  with  its  pohtical 

defence. 

(3)  The  king   exists   for   the  kingdom,   not   the 
kingdom    for    the    king.      The    impUed    contrast 
between  loyalty   (or   obedience)   to   the   king   and 
loyalty  to  the  Crown  (or  to  the  king  in  respect  of 
his  authority  by  reason  of  the  Crown)  is  recurrent 
in  the  Middle  Age.     It  is  fundamental  in  the  history 
of    England,    and    fundamental   not    merely    as    a 
theory  and  justification  of  deposition  of  the  ruler. 
The  subject  is  one  which,  in  its  connections  and 
dependencies,  has  yet  to  be  treated  ;   but  examples 
will  illustrate  the  permanence  and  the  adaptabihty 
of   the   distinction.     The   contrast   of   Crown   with 
(personal)  King  underlies,  e.g.,  the  words  of  Thomas 
Fitz  Thomas  to  Henry  iii.  :    '  My  Lord  King,  we 
Londoners  will  be  your  faithful  and  devoted  subjects, 
so  long  as  you  will  be  good  king  to  us.'     It  underlies 
the  reasoning  in  the  Song  of  Lewes.     It  is  implied 
in  Bracton's  definition  of  the  function  of  the  Crown  : 
'  Est  enim  corona  regis  facere  iustitiam  et  indicium 
et  tenere  pacem,  et  sine  quibus  corona  consistere 
non  potest,  nee  tenere.'      {De  Legibus,   ii.  c.   24. 
Cf    c.  16.)    It  is  found  m  the  position  taken  up, 
according  to  his  enemies,  by  the  younger  Despenser 


NOTES 


209 


(see  Stubbs,  Chronicles  of  Edward  I.  and  Edward 
II.,  R.  S.,  II.  li-lii).  It  is  in  harmony  with  the 
standpoint  of  Fortescue.  It  is  found  in  part  of 
the  pohtical  thought  of  Francis  Bacon,  and  found 
suggestively  in  his  claim  for  the  prerogative  that  it 

*  did  for  the  king  and  still  does  for  the  Crown  what 
the  Common  Law  did  for  the  subject.'  More  con- 
veniently it  was  pressed  into  the  service  of  the 
politics  of  Puritan  democrats  ;  and  in  the  Whiggism 
of  1688  it  contributed  to  a  useful  political  end,  and 
to  the  expedient  constitutionahsm  of  the  Civil 
Government,  although  it  then  and  therein  found  no 
logical  exposition,  no  consistent  defence. 

The  distinction  has  often  rested  as  much  on  the 
arbitrary  play  of  words  as  upon  the  appropriate 
play  of  the  parts  of  the  constitution  :  action  taken 
from  the  force  of  selfish  interest  has  often  had  to 
make  its  appeal  to  '  nature-rightly  '  theories  and  to 
look  for  their  security  in  the  Crown  as  corpits 
politicum.  But  there  is  an  ancestry  for  '  the  Crown,' 
whether  as  the  '  metaphor  in  the  Tower,'  the  *  hiero- 
glyphic of  the  laws,'  or  the  omnipresent  expression 
and  strength  of  rule  ;  and  the  lines  of  descent  go 
back  mainly  to  the  Great  Charter. 

2®  Select  Pleas  in  Manorial  Courts,  1888,  p.  Iv. 

^^  English  Society  in  the  Eleventh  Century,  1908;, 
must  now  be  added. 

*®  Cf.  Domesday  Book  and  Beyond,  p.  223,  and,  for 
the  simile  of  a  pyramid  for  that '  English  state  which 
is  the  outcome  of  a  purely  EngHsh  history,'  pp.  170-1. 
See  also  Vinogradoff,  English  Society,  pp.  208  sqq.,  and 
Mary  Bateson,  Mediaeval  England  (1903),  pp.  97-8  : 

*  One  thing  at  least  is  clear,  that  the  Anglo-Norman 
feudahsm  was  not  a  very  simple  social  scheme  in 
which  the  relations  of  men  were  governed  by  a  few 
determinants  capable  of  brief  analysis.'      (The  sen- 

o 


1; 


i\ 


210     STUDIES   IN   BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 

tences  that  foUow  bear  on  Maitland's  'pyramid.') 
*  The  phrase  feudal  system  appHed  to  the  conditions 
of  Anglo-Norman  society  under  the  first  of  our 
Norman  kings  is  unsatisfactory  because  no  great 
lawyers  had  as  yet  appeared,  ready  to  systematise 
society  and  to  draw  hard  and  fast  Hues.  Enghsh 
society  before  the  Conquest  was  in  a  chaotic  state 
rapidly  approaching  the  verge  of  anarchy,  and  the 
Norman  kings  restored  government  but  did  not 
immediately  revolutionise  or  systematise  society.' 

41  '  As  early  as  1285  an  ever-memorable  step  was 
taken  Some  one  was  endeavouring  to  report  in 
the  vernacular— that  is,  in  French— the  oral  debates 
that  he  heard  in  court.  In  1293  a  fairly  continuous 
stream  began  to  flow.  This  surely  is  a  memorable 
event.  When  duly  considered  it  appears  as  one  of 
the  great  events  in  Enghsh  history.  To-day  men 
are  reporting  at  Edinburgh  and  Dublin,  at  Boston 
and  San  Francisco,  at  Quebec  and  Sydney  and 
Cape  Town,  at  Calcutta  and  Madras.  Their 
pedigree  is  imbroken  and  indisputable.  It  goes 
back  to  some  nameless  lawyers  at  Westminster 
to  whom  a  happy  thought  had  come.  What  they 
desired  was  not  a  copy  of  the  chiUy  record,  cut  and 
dried  with  its  concrete  particulars  concealing  the 
point  of  law.  .  .  .  What  they  desired  was  the  debate 
with  the  Ufe-blood  in  it :  the  twists  and  turns  of 
advocacy,  the  quip  courteous  and  the  coun+ .r- 
stroke  quarrelsome.'— Fear  Books   of  Edward   11., 

I.  xiv-XV.  7      i?  rr      7       ^ 

42  See  Roman  Canon  Law  in  the  Church  of  England, 
pp  100-1  Cf .  Gierke,  Political  Theories  of  the  Middle 
^ae,e.^.pp.  18-19: '  Throughout  the  whole  Middle  Age 
there  reigned,  almost  without  condition  or  qualihca- 
tion,  the  notion  that  the  Oneness  and  Umversahty 
of  the  Church  must  manifest  itself  m  a  unity  of  law, 


NOTES 


211 


constitution  and  supreme  government,  and  also 
the  notion  that  by  rights  the  whole  of  Mankind 
belongs  to  the  Ecclesiastical  Society  that  is  thus 
constituted.  Therefore  it  is  quite  common  to  see 
the  Church  conceived  as  a  "  State."  That  the 
Principle  of  Oneness  demands  of  necessity  an  external 
Unity  was  but  very  rarely  doubted.  ...  It  was 
reserved  for  WycHf  and  Hus  decisively  to  demand 
that  the  Church  should  be  conceived  in  a  more 
inward,  less  external,  fashion,  as  the  community  of 
the  Predestinated,  and  so  to  prepare  the  way  for 
that  German  Reformation  which  at  this  very  point 
broke  thoroughly  away  from  the  medieval  Idea  of 
Unity.'  Cf.  Figgis,  From  Gerson  to  Grotius  (1907),  p.  4. 

*3  English  Law  and  the  Renaissance,  p.  32  :  'A 
hundred  legislatures — little  more  or  less — are  now 
building  on  that  foundation  [the  common  law  of 
England]  :  on  the  rock  that  was  not  submerged. 
We  will  not  say  this  boastfully.  Far  from  it. 
Standing  at  the  beginning  of  a  century  and  in  the 
first  year  of  Edward  vii.,  thinking  of  the  wide  lands 
which  call  him  king,  thinking  of  our  complex  and 
loosely -knit  British  Commonwealth,  we  cannot  look 
into  the  future  without  serious  misgiving.  If  unity 
of  law — such  unity  as  there  has  been — disappears, 
much  else  that  we  treasure  will  disappear  also,  and 
(to  speak  frankly)  unity  of  law  is  precarious.  The 
power  of  the  parliament  of  the  United  Eongdom  to 
legislate  for  the  colonies  is  fast  receding  into  the 
ghostly  company  of  legal  fictions.  .  .  .  The  so-called 
common  law  of  one  colony  will  swerve  from  that 
of  another,  and  both  from  that  of  England.'  Cf. 
Political  Theories  of  the  Middle  Age,  p.  xUii. 

*^  Yeur  Books  of  Edward  11.,  vol.  i.,  Introduction, 
pp.  xxxiii-lxxxi. 

^^  Bracton  and  Azo,  pp.  124-6. 


212     STUDIES  IN   BEITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


46  Pp.   518-19.  . 

47  *  The  rights  of  the  king  are  conceived  as  ditter- 
ing  from  the  rights  of  other  men  rather  in  degree 
than  in  kind.  At  the  beginning  of  Edward  i.  s 
reign,  this  is  expressed  by  lawyers  in  their  common 
saying,  "The  king  is  prerogative."  As  yet  the 
term  prerogative  is  hardly  used  except  m  this 
adjectival  manner.  It  suggests  to  us  that  the  king 
has  the  rights  which  are  given  to  others  by  the 
ordinary  law,  substantive  law  or  procedural  law, 
but  that  we  are  Hkely  to  find  that  each  particular 
ricrht  is  intensified  when  it  is  the  king's ;  the  usual 
definition  of  it  is  exceeded,  for  the  king  is  preroga- 
tive. .  .  .  Prerogativity  is  exce^tiona]it j.'— History 
of  English  Law,  i.  496-7. 

48  Township  and  Borough,  p.  37. 

49  Ibid,,  p.  51. 

50  See  Eng.  Hist.  Rev.,  xv.  120-4. 

51  Camh,  Mod.  Hist.,  ii.  565. 

52  Political  Theories  of  the  Middle  Age,  p.  xhi. 

53  Roman  Canon  Law  in  the  Church  of  EngUnd, 

pp.  179  and  158. 

54  Township  and  Borough,  p.  25. 

55  English  Law  and  the  Renaissance,  p.  14  ;     and 

Roman  Canon  Law  in  the  Church  of  England,  p.  94. 

58  Defensor  Pads,  c.  xu.  :    '  Nos  autem  dicamus 
secundum  veritatem  atque  consilium  AristoteUs  .  .  . 

legislatorem  seu  causam  legis  effectivam  pnmam  et 
propriam  esse  populum,  seu  civium  umversitatem 
aut  eius  valentiorem  partem,  per  suam  electionem 
seu  voluntatem  in  generaU  civium  congregatione 
per  sermonem  expressam,  prsecipientem  seu  deter- 
mmantem  aUquid  fieri  vel  omitti  circa  civiles  actus 
humanos  sub  poena  vel  supphcio  temporali :  valen- 
tiorem inquam  partem  considerata  quantitate  in 
communitate  ilia  super  quam  lex  fertur,   sive  id 


NOTES 


213 


fecerit  universitas  praedicta  civium  aut  eius  pars 
valentior  per  se  ipsam  immediate,  sive  id  alicui 
vel  aliquibus  commiserit  faciendum,  qui  legislator 
simpliciter  non  sunt,  nee  esse  possunt,  secimdum 
solum  ad  aliquid  et  quandoque  ac  secundum  primi 
legislatoris  auctoritatem.' 

5'  E.g.,  *  .  .  .  Perspicuum  fit  duo  imperii  publici 
genera  esse  :  alterum  quidem  summum  legibus  ac 
magistratuum  imperio  solutum,  alterum  legitimum, 
quod  legibus  obhgatur  :  hoc  magistratum  proprium 
est,  illud  vero  maiestatis.' — De  Repuhlica,  iii.  5. 
Cf .  *  Etenim  lege,  sequitate,  legis  actione  et  magis- 
tratus  officio  omnes  ac  imperia  continentur ;  lex 
ipsa  ad  legis  actionem,  aequitas  ad  magistratus 
officium  refertur.'— iii.  5.  *  Refert  autem  plurimum 
magistratus  legibus  teneatur  necne,  an  vero  legibus 
omnino  solutus  sit :  quoniam  in  altero  facti  tantum, 
in  altero  iuris  et  sequitatis  qusestio  versatur  ;  quae 
gravissima  est  si  lex  interpretatione  violatur.' — vi.  6. 

5®  See  quotation  on  page  7  supra, 

59  *  The  most  wonderful  of  all  palimpsests  is  the 
map  of  England,  could  we  but  decipher  it.' — 
Maitland,  Archceological  Review,  iv.  235,  quoted  by 
Round,  The  Commune  of  London,  p.  1. 


INDEX 


Acton,  Lord,  on  compromise, 
124. 

Adams,  John,  39,  129. 

Adams,  Samuel,  40,  129. 

Administration  of  the  Colonies. 
See  Pownall. 

Admonition  to  the  Parliament,  9. 

Alfred,  King,  and  'appeals,' 
154;  the  year  of  his  death, 
154,  199. 

Allen,  John,  on  folkland,  200. 

Althusius,  15,  111,  168-169. 

American  Independence,  30  sqq. , 
171-185;  and  'constitutional- 
ism,' 33-34 ;  considerations 
against  *  inevitableness '  of, 
36-40,  128.  See  also  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  Fother- 
gill,  Franklin,  Hutchinson, 
Jay,  Otis,  Pownall,  Robertson. 

American  Times^  A  Satire,  by 
Camillo  Querno,  178.  See 
Odell. 

Anglicana  Ecclesia,  5. 

Answer  to  the  Declaration  of  the 
American  Congress,  182. 

Aquinas,  3,  110. 

Aristotle,  109-110,  131,  134. 

Art  of  War,  The,  Machiavelli's, 
133. 

Augustine,  3. 

Authority,  68  sqq.     See  Liberty. 

Azo,  Maine  and  Maitland  on, 
143,  194-195. 

Bacon,  Francis,  8  sqq.  ;  his 
composite  life  and  character, 
12 ;  and  Machiavelli,  13;  his 


politics,  13-15 ;  a  Politique, 
15;  on  Church  and  State, 
15-20;  his  via  media,  19;  on 
prerogative,  13,  209 ;  Works 
j      cited,  16-20,  108,  168-169. 

Bancroft,    Archbishop,    9,     11, 
I      168. 

i  Bancroft,  George,  on  the  Ameri- 
!      can  Revolution,  180-181. 
I  Bateson,  Mary,  209. 
'.  Behemoth,  188. 

:  Bentham,  76,  103,  113,  134-136. 
I  Bodin,  7,  15,  111,  162,  188,  213. 
Boswell,  42. 
Bracton,  143,    149-150,  194-196, 

208. 
Bramhall,   Bishop,   on  Hobbes, 

112-11.*],  189. 

Brief  View  and  Survey  of  .   .  . 

Mr.    Hohbes's    Book,    entitled 

Leviathan  (Clarendon's),  186. 

Britain,    an     interpretation     of 

the  politics  of,   65  sqq.  ;  and 

the  French  Revolution,  95-97. 

Brougham,  Lord,  on  '  the  middle 

classes,'  116,  117,  189. 
Buchanan,  George,  163. 
Burke,  Edmund,  22,  56,  62,  67, 

77,83,  108,  124,  129,  186. 
Burton,    Parliamentary    Diary, 
88-89,  186. 

Canon  Law,  Stubbs  and  Mait- 
land on,  151-152,  197-198. 
Cartae  oi  1166,  155,  201-202. 
Cartwright,  Thomas,  9. 
Castigations  of  Mr.  Hohhes,  112, 

189. 

216 


216     STUDIES    IN    BRITISH  HISTORY  AND   POLITICS 


Catching  of  Leviathan ^  112,  189. 

Cecil  Manuscripts,  8. 

Charter,  the  Great,  155  ;  inter- 
pretation of,  202-204,  205,  206. 

Choate,  Ruf us,  on  the  '  glittering 
generalities'  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  45,  180. 

Church  government,  1-29  ;  medi- 
eval, 210-211. 

Clarendon,  2-3,  68,  91,  186. 

Coleridge,  134. 

Commerce  and  colonies,  58,  127, 
190. 

Compromise  in  politics,  20,  94, 
124. 

Constitution  in  Church  and  in 
State,  26;  the  State  and 
sovereignty,  80,  82,  136. 

Constitutionalism  in  the  Ameri- 
can Question,  33-34,  36-38,  40, 
49-51. 

Cowell,  The  Interpreter^  201. 

Cromer,  Lord,  120. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  82,  88-89. 

Crown,  King  and,  51,  94,  155, 
206-209. 

Dangerous  Positions  and  Pro- 
ceedings under  pretence  of 
Reformation^  11,  168. 

Dante,  20,  110,  134. 

Deane,  Silas,  42. 

Declaration  of  Independence, 
44-46,  51,  180;  glittering 
generalities  of,  180-181. 

Democracy,  117 ;  and  liberty, 
137   191. 

De  Bepubiica  (Bodin's),  188, 213. 

Destiny,  historians  and,  34. 

Dialogue  of  the  Common  LaWy 
188. 

Dicey,  A.  V.,  Law  and  Public 
Opinion  in  England^  190,  191. 

Dickinson,  John,  48. 

Diffidatio,  208. 

Dissenters,    education  of,    125- 

127. 
Domesday  Book,  150,  154. 
Domesday    Book    and    Beyond, 

l528qq.,l5S8qq.,  193-194,209. 


Ecclesiastical  Discipline,  1,  10. 
Edinburgh,   the   University  of, 

and  colonial  students,  41  sqq.  ; 

Princeton    and,   52 ;    colonial 

graduates  of,  176,  178-180. 
Edward  i.,  75,  81. 
Empire,     comparative    politics 

within   the   British,    105-106, 

119,  211. 
England,   what  it    stands    for, 

65    sqq.  ;     interpretation     of 

history  and  politics  of,  70  sqq. 

Equality,  95. 

Essays  in  Anglo-Saxon  Law,  140, 

199. 

Essays  in  Subjects  connected  with 

the  Reformation,  192. 
Expediency   in   politics,   83-86, 

124. 

Feoffametitiim  antiquum  and  no- 
vum, 155,  201-202. 

Feudalism  and  *  the  feudal 
system,'  156,  208. 

Folkland,  154,  199-200. 

Fortescue,  Sir  John,  76. 

Fothergill,  John,  31  ;  his  pamph- 
let on  the  American  colonies, 
31-33,41. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  31,  42-44, 
51,  54,  60,  178,  180,  184. 

Franklin,  William,  54. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  154-155,  200. 

Friedenwald,  H.,  The  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  quoted, 

180. 
Fuller,  Church  History,  10,  168. 

*  General  Cause,'  the,  in  his- 

tory, 35-36. 

♦  General  will,'  the,  132. 
Gentilis,  Albericus,  7,  162,  167. 
Gentz,  F.  von,  66. 

George  iii.  on  Ben  j  amin  Franklin , 
43. 

Gierke,  Otto,  153,  162,  210. 

Godwin,  William,  Political  Jus- 
tice, 77. 

Gouvernement  de  Pologne,  Rous- 
seau's, 133,  191. 


INDEX 


217 


Graduates  (honorary),  American, 
of  the  University  of  Edinburgh, 
43,  178-180. 

Green,  J.  R.,  154,200. 

Grindal,  Archbishop,  9. 

Guicciardini,  110. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  60, 130. 
Hancock,  John,  45. 
Harrington,  87,  133,  191. 
Henry  vii. ,  81. 
Hildebrand,  3,  5. 
Historical-mindedness,  125. 
Historical  analogy,  125. 
History,  what  it  is  and  what  it 

reveals,  25,  62-64;  and  politics, 

62-63,  121  sqq. ;  as  record  and 

as  estimate,  122. 
History  of  English  Law  before  the 

Time  of  Edward  I.,  142,  148 

sqq.,  195,  197,200,212. 
History  of  Procedure  in  England 

(1066-1204),  140. 
Hobbes,  69, 91, 111-1 12, 168, 188- 

189 
Hooker,  2,  6,  22,  27,  167. 
Hutchinson,  Thomas,  43-44,  129, 

179-180,  182-184. 

Imperium,  4  ;  et  liber tas,  68. 
Independence.       See   American 

and  Declaration. 
Independents,  21,  27-28. 

Jay,  John,   on    Independence, 

39. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  44-45,  181. 
Jews    and    the    Parliamentary 

Oath,  99-100. 
Junius,  51. 
Justice,  historic,  67. 

Kames,  Lord,  letter  from 
Franklin  to,  184. 

Kant,  Principles  of  Politics, 
quoted,  35,  176. 

Kent,  C.  A.,  Constitutional  His- 
tory of  the  United  States  as  seen 
in  the  Development  of  American 
Law,  206. 


Key  to  Domesday,  Eyton's,  154, 

200. 
Kingship,  personal  and  official, 

in  English  history.  See  Crown. 
Knight  service,  154,  200-201. 
Kuhn,  Adam,  47. 

Laud,  6,  8,  9 ;  and  StraflFord,  25 ; 
on  unity  and  uniformity  in 
religion,  27 ;  on  Roman  Catho- 
lics. 27  ;  his  partial  success, 
26  29. 

Law,  Bacon  and  Burke  on,  108  ; 
historical  study  of,  141,  147 
sqq. 

Law,  a  '  good,'  according  to 
Hobbes,  168. 

Law,  the  Rule  of,  101-103. 

Lee,  Arthur,  41-44,60. 

Legale  indicium  parium,  155,204. 

Leigh,  Edward,  A  Treatise  of 
Religion  and  Learning,  quoted, 

139,  193. 

Letter  from  a  Virginian  to.  .  .  the 

Congress  .  .  .  at  Philadelphia, 

181-182. 
Leviathan,  The,  188,  189.      See 

Hobbes. 
Lewes,  poem  on  the  battle  of, 

208. 
Lex  terrae,  155,  204-205. 
Liberalism  in  British    politics, 

76,  134-136. 
Liberty  (political)  and  authority, 

21,62, 68c^gg., 104-105, 124-125, 

136-137  ;  and  democracy,  137. 
Liberum  veto,  Rousseau  on  the, 

190. 
Locke,  John,  76,  93,   111,   113, 

131,  175,  188-189,  209. 

McCosH,  James,  52. 
Machiavelli,  13,  110,   130,   134, 

168. 
McKechnie,  W.  S.,  204. 
Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  quoted, 

86,  186. 
Magna  Carta.     See  Charter. 
Maine,  Sir  H.  S.,  194. 
Maitland,  F.  W.,  138-163;  and 


218     STUDIES  IN   BRITISH  HISTORY   AND   POLITICS 


Stubbs,  139,  141,  151,  193; 
and  Sir  F.  Pollock,  142,  14S ; 
on  the  history  of  English  law, 
142  sqq. ;  on  Bracton,  143,  149 ; 
on  the  Year  Books,  147-148, 
196,  197,  210;  and  Professor 
Gierke,  153;  his  style,  156-160; 
an  appreciation  of,  161-163. 
See  Notes,  192  sqq. 

Maitland,  S.  K,  138,  192. 

Manegold  on  kingship,  207. 

Marsilius,  Defensor  Pads,  131, 
162,  212-213. 

Middle  Age,  Church  of  the,  3-4. 

Milton,  8  sqq.  ;  and  Dante,  20 ; 
his  politics,  21-22  ;  on  liberty, 
21 ;  on  the  Presbyterians, 
22-23  ;  quotations  from,  21-24, 
170. 

Mind-in-action,  the  study  of,  64. 

Minorities,  rights  of,  137. 

Montesquieu,  65,  113,  130,  137, 
190,  191. 

Montfort,  Simon  de,  74. 

Morgan,  John,  46,  47. 

Nationalism,  40,  118. 
Natural  law,  1 58. 
Natural  rights,  132. 
Norman  Conquest,  The,  69,  81, 
.   150,  197. 

Numbersin  medieval  chroniclers, 
154,  200-201. 

Oceana,  The.     See  Harrington. 
Odell,  Jonathan,  satirist,  42,  44, 

48,  54-55,  178. 
Ordericus  Vitalis,  154,  200. 
Otis,  James,  31,  129,  174-176. 

Paine,  Thomas,  Common  Sense, 
47,  185. 

Pamphlets,  political,  in  Britain, 
104. 

Parker's,  Archbishop,  'Adver- 
tisements,' 9. 

Parliamentary  Papers,  119-120. 

Party  in  politics,  80,  86, 115, 128. 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  83  sqq. ,  100-101, 
117,  190. 


Pennsylvania,  University  of,  46, 

48. 
Petit-Dutaillis,     Charles,     197, 

204,  205. 
Phelps,  E.  J.,  205. 
Philadelphia,  College  of,  46,  48  ; 

Convention,  50. 
Pike,  L.  O.,  197,  204. 
Pitt,  the  younger,  77,  83,  95-97, 

130. 
Placita  Anglo- Normannica,  140. 
Political   thinkers,   tests   to   be 

applied  in  studying,  130  sqq. 
Politics,     in     thought    and     in 

practice,  108-114  ;  Spinozaon, 

109;  ways  of  studying,  114; 

and  party,  115;  and  history, 

121  sqq. 
Pollock,  Sir  Frederick,  141,  148, 

194   195. 
Pownall,  Thomas,  31,  129,  171 

sqq. 
Precedent  in  English  history,  71 

sqq.,  98. 
Prerogative,  the  king's,  13,  208, 

209,  212. 
Presbyterians,  Milton    on    the, 

22,  28. 
Prince,  The,  110,  134. 
Princeton,  52. 
Prothero,  G.  W.,  167. 
Property,   the  balance   of,  and 

political  power,  133. 
Public  opinion,  133. 
Puritans,  the,  8,  10,  18-29,  71, 

73,  82,  87-91,  133. 

Ramsay,  Sir  James  H.,  201. 
'Reason  of  State,'  13,  102,  124- 

125. 
Reformation,  The,  4  sqq.,  151, 

162,  167. 
*  Reformation  without  tarrying,' 

10. 
Relativity  in  historical  estimate, 

67. 
Representation,  rise  of  county, 

98. 
Restoration,  the  (of   1660),  28, 
71.  91-92. 


INDEX 


219 


*  Result,'  the,  in  historical  ex- 
position, 35. 

Revolution,  the  (of  1688),  71, 
76,  86,  92-95 ;  Locke  on,  189. 

Revolution,  the  French,  86,  95- 
97. 

Rights  of  the  British  Colonies 
assert^  and  proved.     See  Otis. 

Robertson,  William,  41,  52, 
176-178. 

Rome,  Church  of,  19,  24,  27. 

Round,  J,  Horace,  152,  154, 197, 
200-201,  202,  204,  213. 

Rousseau,  132-133,  134,  191. 

Rush,  Benjamin,  41,  46-47. 

Sacerdotium,  4. 

Salisbury,  John  of,  on  tyranni- 
cide, 207. 

Schism  Act,  the,  125- 126. 

Scottish  Parliament,  union  of 
the  English  with  the,  37. 

Seebohm,  Frederick,  141,  193. 

Selden,  139. 

Selden  Society,  The,  144sg9.,  196. 

Separation  des  pouvoirs,  Montes- 
quieu on  the,  137,  191. 

Shippen,  William,  47. 

Smith,  Adam,  113,  129,  189. 

Smith,  Sir  Thomas,  103,  187. 

Smith,  William,  46. 

Social  Contract,  The,  132,  133, 
190,  191. 

Sovereignty,  80,  90,  111,  188, 
213. 

Spinoza  on  politics,  109,  111, 
188  ;  and  Machiavelli,  134 ; 
on  liberty  of  thought,  169. 

Stamp  Act,  the,  31,  128. 

State,  the,  affected  by  the  Refor- 
mation, 4- 8;  'reason  of  (raison 
d'etat),  13, 102, 124-125;  Bodin 
and  Althusius  on,  15-16,  168- 


169;  and  constitution,  26,  136. 
See  Constitution  and  Sover- 
eignty. 

Statesmanship,  British,  79-86, 
102,  105-107. 

Stevenson,  W.  H.,  198,  199. 

Stewart  rule,  25-27, 69,  75,  81-82. 

Strafford,  6,  25. 

Strype,  Life  of  Parker,  167. 

Stubbs,  William,  138,  145,  149, 
151,  193,  198,  199,  202-203, 
208-209. 

Tavannes,  15. 
Thucydides,  111,  189. 
Tocqueville,  Alexis  de,  130,  190. 
Trade  and  the  American  Colonies, 

58,  171-172. 
Travers,  Walter,  10,  167. 
Tudor  rule,  75. 
Turgot,  57. 

United  Empire  Lotalism,  34, 
38,  40. 

Vestiarian  Controversy,  8. 
Vinogradoff,  Paul,  140,  144,  152, 

154,    155,    195-196,    197,    199, 

200,  201-202,  209. 
Volenti  nonfit  injuria,  85. 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  on  com- 
mercial policy,  127. 

Wandsworth,  presbytery  at,  9. 

Wedderburn,  Alexander,  44. 

Whiggism,  76,  94,  209. 

Whitgift,  Archbishop,  9. 

Wilkes,  John,  42,  102. 

William  I.,  81. 

Wilson,  James,  47  sqq. 

Wltherspoon,  John,  51  sqq. ; 
satirised  by  Odell,  54-55,  176. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


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VOL.    I.    ABBEY— EYRE. 
VOL.  II.    FAED— MUYBRIDGE. 
VOL.111.    NAPIER— YOUNG. 

This  second  Supplement  of  the  Dictionary  supplies  biographies  of 
all  noteworthy  persons  who  died  between  the  day  of  Queen  Victoria's 
death,  22nd  January,  1901  (the  limit  of  the  First  Supplement)  and 
31  St  December.  1911. 

SOME   PRESS   OPINIONS. 

Times. — 'The  remarkable  biography  of  King  Edward  VII.  shows  qualities  of 
careful  preparation  and  of  judgment' 

Daily  Telegraph.—'  The  biography  of  the  late  King  written  by  the  Editor 
reviews  the  life  from  every  standpoint,  and  makes  a  closer  personal  study  of  the 
man  and  the  King  than  has  hitherto  been  attempted.' 

Morning  Post. — *  The  Editor  is  to  be  heartily  congratulated  on  the  conscientious 
execution  of  a  delicate  but  most  interesting  task.' 

Standard. — '  A  most  valuable  contribution  to  the  political  and  constitutional 
history  of  the  period  that  lies  immediately  behind  us.' 

Manchester  Guardian. — '  The  appearance  of  the  first  volume  of  the  Second 
Supplement  is  an  event  of  more  than  usual  importance.' 

Daily  Chronicle. — '  The  first  real,  intimate,  authoritative  account  of  King 
Edward.' 

London  :  Smith.  Elder  &  Co.,   1 5  Waterloo  Place,  S. W. 


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Works  by  W.  H.  Fitchett,  B.A.,  LL.D. 

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Nelson  and  his  Captains  :  Sketches  of  Famous  Seamen. 
With  1 1  Portraits  and  a  Facsimile  Letter.     4th  Impression. 

The  Tale  of  the  Great  Mutinv. 

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Fights  for  the  Flag. 

Sixth  Edition.     With  16  Portraits  and  13  Plans. 

Deeds  that   Won  the  Empire. 

Twenty-sixth  Edition.     With  16  Portraits  and  11  Plans. 
Wellington's    Men  :     Some  Soldier-Autobiographles. 

How  England  Saved  Europe:    The  story  of  the 

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London  :  SMITH,  ELDER  &  CO.,  15  Waterloo  Place,  S.W. 


WORKS   BY  SIDNEY  LEE. 


A   LIFE    OF 

WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Sixth  Edition.     With  a  New  Preface.     Large  crown  8vo.  Js.  6d. 

With  Two  Portraits  of  Shakespeare,  a  Portrait  of  the  Earl  of  Southampton, 

and  Facsimiles  of  Shakespeare's  known  Signatures. 

BLACKWOOD'S  MAGAZINE.— 'This  masterly  work  is  an  honour  to  EncHsh 
scholarship,  an  almost  perfect  model  of  its  kind,  and  it  is  matter  for  great  national 
rejoicing  that  the  standard  life  of  Shakespeare  has  at  last  been  made  m  England.  Rarehr 
have  we  seen  a  book  so  wholly  satisfying,  so  admirably  planned,  so  skilfully  executed- 

.  It  is  an  absolutely  indispensable  handbook  for  every  intelligent  reader  of  the  plays. 

A  THENMUM.—''  There  is  no  doubt  that  for  some  time  to  come,  probably  for  a 
long  time,  it  will  be  a  general  text-book,' 

^/»^C7V1  rO/?.—' Unquestionably  one  of  the  most  remarkable  achievements  of 
modem  English  scholarship.  .  .  .  The  mass  of  obscure  and  tangled  controversies  which 
he  has  ravelled  out  is  immense.' 

TIMES.— ^  A.  marvel  of  research,  and,  on  the  whole,  remarkably  temperate, 
judicious,  and  convincing.  .  .  .  Never  before  has  learning  been  brought  to  bear  upon 
Shakespeare's  biography  with  anything  like  the  same  force.' 

PALL  MALL  (;y4Z^r7'5.—*  A  definitive  biography.' 

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8vo.  2s.  6d. 

SHAKESPEARE'S    HANDWRITING. 

Facsimiles  of  the  Five  Authentic   Autograph   Signatures  of  the   Poet. 

Extracted  from  Sidney  Lee's  *  Life  of  William  Shakespeare.' 

With  an  Explanatory  Note.     Crown  8vo.  6d. 


QUEEN  VICTORIA:  a  Biography. 

NEW,  REVISED,  AND  CHEAPER  EDITION. 
With  Portraits,  Map,  and  a  Facsimile  Letter.     Large  crown  8vo.  6j. 

QUARTERLY  REVIEW.— 'Mr.  Sidney  Lee  has  performed,  with  marked  sue- 
cess,  a  work  which  required,  in  no  common  moasurej  a  combination  of  assiduous  labour, 
skUful  arrangement,  and  unfailing  uct.  ...  Our  interest  is  sustained  from  the  tirst 
page  to  the  last.' 

*^*  Also  the  Fourth  Impression  (Second  Edition)  of  the 
Original  Edition.  With  Portraits,  Maps,  and  a  Facsimile  Letter.  Large 
crown  8vo.  los.  6d. 


London:   SMITH,  ELDER,  &  CO..  15  Waterloo  Place,  S.W. 


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This  book  is  due  on  the  date  indicated  below,  or  at  the 
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provided  by  the  library  rules  or  by  special  arrangement  with 
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DATE  BORROWED 

DATE  DUE 

DATE  BORROWED 

DATE  DUE 

\ 

WUV    Z  >i     !33 

] 

• 

■ 

C28  (1149}  lOOM 

• 

DEC  3     1924 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  UBRARIES 


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